But this is not just an ornamental artifact. What it attempts to do is simulate the actual way someone would turn a page in a large book, such as a dictionary,

But this is not just an ornamental artifact. What it attempts to do is simulate the actual way someone would turn a page in a large book, such as a dictionary, with lots of thin pages. I would argue that the technical way of implementing this would warrant a patent (utility) more so than the simple depiction of a thing that people naturally do with books. In no way is this design unique to Apple; there is already prior art from the way people turn pages in books. The choice to depict realistic page turning on an ebook reader is not artistically novel. From a video game perspective, this is like patenting the idea of showing a game world from an isometric point of view. This is a bad patent. Now, I would agree with you that the NY Times article does exaggerate the impact of this patent. Apple has not patented the page turn, instead they have patented a particular realistic way of showing turning pages. In theory, Amazon could implement a page turn style where someone grabs the top corner of the page instead of the bottom and get around this patent.