A Pretty Maniacal Group of People

12 September 2012

Farhad Manjoo pieces together some iPhone pre-history, using evidence submitted during the recent Apple Vs. Samsung trial. The effort and institutionalised secrecy involved in its production seems staggering.

Apple has an extensive array of systems to quickly create physical prototypes of digital designs, and the team would handle all of these prototypes and remark on how they felt. “We’re a pretty maniacal group of people,” [veteran hardware designer Christopher] Stringer explained, pointing out that they would sometimes review 50 different refinements of a single hardware button.

Yes, the patent system is broken. Yes, big corporations are litigious. The Apple Vs. Samsung verdict doesn’t change anything. It makes the patent system no more or less legitimate. It makes the act of suing your competitors no more or less morally objectionable.

But then you hear how a successful, disruptive product was willed into existence through years of hard work and secrecy. Then you see hundreds of prototypes that were painstakingly designed, tested and discarded. Then you get a sense for the tiny, “obvious”, details that were included because someone really used the device, every day during its creation.

Then, knowing all this, how can you begrudge the creators the opportunity to prove that their work was shamelessly copied?

This trial was not about the patents. The patents were just another piece of evidence that Apple used to support the story, that they poured years of hard work into the iPhone, which Samsung simply copied and reaped the rewards.