Apple awarded patent for touchscreen slide-to-unlock gesture

[dp1234]

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/26/apple_awarded_patent_for_touchscreen_slide_to_unlock_gesture.html

[dp1234]

How is something that seems so obvious and trivial patentable? In the physical world this seems like patenting doorknobs that rotate to the left versus the ones that rotate to the right that everyone was already using.

[wmf → dp1234]

If it was obvious, other phones must have already implemented it before the iPhone came out, right?

[gerggerg]

prior art? http://goo.gl/Wvv6l