A very good article in the latest edition of Bloomberg Businessweek....

I have included some excerpts below. Interesting commentary on how the development of an idea works, and how their reputation for secrecy is justified in light of their issues with Samsung.

Its true, its where we don't think to look, that the answers can be found.

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-apple-built-3d-touch-iphone-6s/

“With [3D Touch] it was only at the moment where we finally got a design experience that’s like, ‘Yes! This is what we want!’ that we [asked] how hard it’s going to be to make.”

The answer: really hard. But not as hard as it would be for a competitor. Apple has such unprecedented resources (roughly $200 billion in cash on hand) that it’s been able to collect many of the world’s top specialists, across a variety of fields, and stash them for a rainy day. A former executive not authorized to speak for this story suggested that Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats last year had nothing to do with headphones; it was about buying Beats Chief Executive Officer Jimmy Iovine’s savant-like knowledge of the music business. “If you need to solve a particular problem, usually the best person in the world already works here,” says Dye.

........When Ive’s promotion to chief design officer was announced in May and his deputies were given more day-to-day authority, the cottage industry of Apple gossip sites surmised this was the beginning of a slow fade. Ive was said to be too impatient for a company of massively integrated product lines. There’s no evidence this is true, and the relationship between Ive and Cook is close and mutually admiring. But Ive is vigilant in guarding against the creative dangers of Apple’s enormity. “There’s a tax that comes with interoperability and what can be seen as complexity, which is it can actually be an impediment to innovation.”.......

........Still, working backward from a design idea to create a real-world, fail-safe, supply chain-able product for hundreds of millions of people can’t be done with resources alone. Apple isn’t in the habit of explaining how it makes things work, because the people at Samsung can read, and hold a patent on a similar technology.......

........Apple starts planning its keynote events four months in advance, and as September approaches Phil Schiller is sweating over just how long this one might go. “We’re trying hard to keep it under two hours,” he says. “I think we’re going to be over.” This, too, can be pinned on the designers. “We’ve never released a feature to make a date,” says Ive. They also don’t hold features back. Things are ready when they’re ready, and this season is swollen with new ideas..........