[Zak]

really how obvious is it?

I think you're approaching the question from the wrong angle. Whether the idea of swipe to unlock is obvious is irrelevant; ideas can't be patented. Only implementations can be patented. Do you think a programmer familiar with touchscreens and mobile development would have difficulty figuring out how to implement swipe to unlock when presented with the idea?

[idspispopd]

I've already stated that I view the patent system as broken. We agree here.

The question I'm asking is within this broken system. How natural is this gesture? It means without the apple iphone, would we still be using this gesture, would it still be considered obvious?

[Zak]

Given that the Neonode N1 had it first, I suspect that we would.

I think it probably would have come about not long after capacitive touchscreens became the standard input device for phones no matter what. It's the easiest gesture to make that is fairly unlikely to happen by accident when the phone is in a pocket.

[ebf]

The slide to unlock feature is a skeuomorphic design. The sliding lock is a very common lock on doors. I would consider it obvious for that reason alone.

[idspispopd]

I noted this above, but what is analogous between doors of a bygone era and accessing a touch-based device. Swiping a portion of the screen is the obvious component, but the skeuomorph isn't, I'm yet to see a good rationale for why this is more obvious than the many other opening simple-gesture skeuomorphs that could have been chosen.

I can think over many other more logical/closer skeuomorphs, which forms the basis of my question: was apple's choice a naturally occurring one, or their design choice. This isn't about patents, it's just a mind experiment as to understand if this is as straight forward as it seems in retrospect. (Because good design always appears obvious in retrospect.)

I'm yet to be presented with an answer to this, this is the crux of originality.