On Design Theft ⇥ flyosity.com

Mike Rundle:

Why did a designer throw out 20 iterations and pick the 21st design to be the one to ship? What led them to the those specific conclusions and insights? What down-the-road thinking influenced the design? Samsung doesn’t know why Apple went with a homescreen with a fixed row at the bottom, they just know that the iPhone is hot and they want all their phones to look like the iPhone in the eyes of consumers. That’s why they stole Apple’s interface designs: to short-circuit the innovation process and jump straight into the line ahead of everyone else.

Precisely. Why copy these specific elements otherwise? If they are so critical to the user experience, Samsung should have paid (or at least negotiated) on the $30 per phone price. If they aren’t worth $30 in Samsung’s eyes, then there should be no problem in tossing them. But that misses the fundamental question as to why lists bounced back at the end of the scroll in the first place.