... to defend designs and methods they create.

The problem with software patenting is that, as you said, many of these patents are too vague. It used to be that an individual or company had to demonstrate a working model (scale or full-size) of the device to be patented so the differences between existing and new technologies could be readily seen. In many ways, this is much harder to do with software and quite honestly Apple got bit 25 years ago by copyright law which should have served the same purpose for software that it does for print publication. The few places Apple succeeded in its old copyright litigation were where Apple could prove the code was a direct copy of their own. I personally believe that patents again should required live demonstration of how the submission works before ever even accepting the application.
And no, I don't care who gets turned down if that technology does prove to be too much like something already patented.