Apple engineer explains how the iPhone was designed for ‘normal people’

The Samsung trial marched on today, with Apple’s Greg Christie taking the stand. You might remember Christie, the senior software engineer, from this WSJ article last month, where he detailed some of the early stages of original iPhone development. And this afternoon, he did the same thing in court.

More specifically, Christie shared some new details on the development of the iPhone’s ‘Slide to Unlock,’ which is one of the patents that Apple’s accusing  Samsung of infringing. He said initially, his team wanted the handset’s display to be always on, but they quickly discovered it needed a locked mode…

Recode and CNET have more from Christie’s testimony:

We couldn’t meet our power requirements if we had that active a state,” Apple human-interface head Greg Christie said on Friday, testifying at the Apple-Samsung patent trial. “We had to resort to a power button.” The company was also worried about the phone sending inadvertent emails or “pocket dialing.”

“We knew we had to have a locked mode, or a locked state, where it wouldn’t let you do most things, except you could unlock it.” Christie and his team then worked on a solution, eventually settling on the slide-to-unlock mechanism that shipped on the iPhone and is among the patented features at issue in the case.

Christie also reiterated that developing the iPhone was a serious risk for the company, as it was new territory—something Apple has brought up many times. He said creating the phone took three years, and it went through hundreds of design tweaks to ensure it worked in a way ‘anyone’ could understand.

One of the biggest challenges is that we need to sell products to people who don’t do what we do for a living,” Christie, one of the inventors of the slide-to-unlock iPhone feature, said. When designing products, Apple keeps in mind that it wants “normal people – people with better things to do with their lives than learn how a computer might work – to use the product as well as we can.” [...]

Christie, the second witness to testify for Apple in this trial, after marketing chief Phil Schiller, walked the jury on Friday through the process of developing the first iPhone in the mid-2000s. Much of his time on the stand was spent emphasizing Apple’s efforts to make the device easy to use. According to various surveys Apple conducted — and that were made available as court exhibits — ease of use is the most important factor for smartphone buyers. 

As a whole, Apple is trying to make the case that the inventions it’s suing Samsung over are extremely valuable to its business and worth a significant amount of money. The company is asking for some $2 billion in damages from the Korean handset maker for infringing on 5 of its software utility patents.

Steve Jobs email reveals past Apple TV ideas: apps, ‘magic wand’ remote and more

We’re only a few days in, but we’ve already learned a lot from the Apple-Samsung patent trial. With it being a legal proceeding, the public is given access to information it wasn’t previously privi’ed to by way of executive testimonies, corporate emails and other evidence.

In fact, earlier today a particularly interesting email surfaced from former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The document, which was submitted as evidence in the case, features a list of things Jobs wanted to discuss at the company’s 2010 ‘top 100′ meeting, including the Apple TV…

First of all, what is a ‘Top 100′ meeting? According to former Apple employees, the company hosts a meeting every year featuring its top 100 executives, managers and other staffers. These meetings are extremely secretive, and often include discussion of new products.

Now, about that email. The Verge has posted the entire thing here, in PDF form, but we’re going to be specifically looking at the Apple TV section. Jobs outlined a total of 11 talking points in the message, each with a few bullet points, and the Apple TV is item number 8.

Apple has mentioned the ‘magic wand’ several times in previous patent applications. We’ve covered two filings that specifically talk about it here and here, and both describe the wand as a Wii-like TV remote with built in fingerprint sensors for loading custom user profiles.

So is this so-called ‘wand’ still bouncing around Apple’s R&D labs? It’s tough to say. The company is believed to be working on new TV hardware with support for gaming, and a device like this seems like it’d be perfect. But there has been no mention of it in recent reports.

We’re likely to see a lot more of these kinds of documents come to light—oh, and some $2 billion in damages hangs in the balance. The trial is expected run for the next 3-4 weeks.