I don't know what the patent process is in Apple, but I've been part of the patent process at other large tech companies in similar spaces to Apple. They tend t

I don't know what the patent process is in Apple, but I've been part of the patent process at other large tech companies in similar spaces to Apple. They tend to have patent comittees that have senior staff from across the organisation. A patent is complex in terms of its value, on the one hand the organisation must be seen to file enough patents to hit their targets and look 'innovative' (spoiler: no patents are innovative) but any patent costs a tonne to go through the lawyers. There's also a non-trivial bonus for filing a patent (those good at gaming the system- oh sorry, no I mean the most innnovative engineers- can double their salary using patents). I find it very difficult to understand how this patent would've escaped Apple's internal processes as anything other than an attempt to confuse poeple or as a defensive patent. For me, I think the defense explanation makes the most sense, Apple doesn't want to be in a position where a method of plugging an iPhone into a macbook is patented by anyone but themslves. No need to worry that the iPhone is actually thicker than the laptop they think it's going to fit inside.