>A poster previously in the thread has said that touch screens did not exist before Apple used them;

This is a flat out lie.

>said that touch must only be fingers.

This is also a lie.

>Minority Report - 2004 (design ideas, not working implementation)

Completely different method, used cameras to sense hand positions in air, not physical screens.

And even if minority report showed a PDA with a touch UI in it, it would be completely irrelevant to the point I was making.

Having read some of your (very many) posts (that were made after mine) it appears you're now saying that Apple does not just assemble existing parts to create iPhone - that innovation happened in software and hardware to existing stuff and that iPhone is not possible without that innovation. (I think this a fair paraphrase of the most important point you're making; please let me know if I've got it wrong, and realise that I made a mistake and that I'm not lying to distort facts).

If we limit conversation to the sentence fragment "assemble components like lego" then most people would agree that Apple does more than that. It's unfortunate that someone in this thread used that phrase; it's unfortunate that you wrote such a broad response.

So, now we discuss whether what Apple (and it doesn't need to be Apple, my view would be the same about other companies) did amounts to patentable innovation.

We're not going to agree on that bit. But for me that's fine. You think the money and research and work that Apple did, and the result, is a significantly different implementation and so is patentable. I think it's a refinement upon existing technology.