Apple made Greg Christie, one of its original iPhone engineers, available before yet another round of patent fights with Samsung, allowing Christie to further expand on the stories of the iPhone’s secretive development under then-CEO Steve Jobs in a report by the Wall Street Journal. While some of what Christie said isn’t new information, there are some interesting anecdotes near the end of his interview.
For example, in 2005—two years before the Apple went public with the iPhone—Christie’s team was responsible for planning how the device would look and work. When the team found itself floundering and unable to settle on how the phone should work, Christie was told that his team could either figure it out over the next two weeks or be moved to another project so someone else could solve the problems.