JEFFREY TRAER BERNSTEIN
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traer@murderandcreate.com
linkedin
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I am an inventor and designer at Apple, where I have led the Prototyping team since 2007.

Prototyping is an exploratory design team. When Apple develops a new technology, it is our job to figure out what it does for people — before there's a roadmap, before there's a product, before there's a spec, before engineering has requirements. We design what software would look like, feel like, and behave like with a new technology. We work 3–5 years ahead of shipping, across every Apple product line.

We draw pictures, animate, make videos, and build interactive prototypes with code. Each project requires us to imagine a new interaction, articulate it visually, prove it is desirable through prototypes, then convince the most scrutinized product organization on earth to build the software and hardware to make it happen. When the product decision finally arrives, the answer is already waiting.

I hold over 160 issued United States Patents covering user interfaces across version 1 of nearly every product Apple has introduced since 2007.

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SELECTED PROJECTS · Face ID · Animoji · Swipe Up · Center Stage · Deskview · Dual Camera · Live Photos · Apple Pencil · Force Touch Trackpad · Multi-touch Trackpad · iPad
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FACE ID — When Apple acquired a depth camera company, nobody knew what to do with it. We mapped everything a depth sensor could mean for people across every Apple product. Secure facial authentication was one of the major themes we developed. When we wanted to make an all-display iPhone and we needed authentication, the answer was already waiting. We created a roadmap of authentication features for iOS that we are still working toward today. In 33 iPhones and 4 iPads since 2017.

ANIMOJI — We put professional facial motion capture in everyone's pocket. The same technology used in film production to animate characters from actors' performances, available on iPhone, driven entirely by your face, no markers or studio required.

SWIPE UP — We had always been challenging whether the home button was right. In 2013 we developed a range of ideas for what home could look like without it. When iPhone X made an all-display phone real, the answer was already waiting. In 33 iPhones and 4 iPads since 2017.

CENTER STAGE — We concepted, designed, and prototyped what it would feel like to have your own personal cinematographer. On iPad, a camera that follows you in a video call, with motion and framing tuned to feel human rather than mechanical. On iPhone, the camera automatically zooms and rotates for group selfies and you can capture landscape or portrait without turning the phone. Our work motivated the decision to design and build new cameras for iPad, Displays, and Mac starting in 2021.

DESKVIEW — Video calls show your face. We wanted a way to talk about what was in front of you — a sketch, a photo, a magazine, anything you'd naturally hold up or point to in a real conversation. If the camera is wide enough to see your desk, you can un-warp the perspective to simulate a top-down view, like a ceiling-mounted camera without the ceiling mount. The hardware solution built into the iMac to make this work is a remarkable piece of engineering we helped motivate. In iMac since 2021.

DUAL CAMERA — When Apple added a second lens, other phones treated it as two separate cameras. We designed it as one — a zoom interaction that made the transition between lenses invisible to the user. In almost every iPhone since iPhone 7 Plus in 2016.

LIVE PHOTOS — We explored what it means to capture a moment in time rather than an instant. The key insight was that as you swipe between photos, each one briefly comes alive — a glimpse of the moment around the shutter. A photograph that remembers what happened just before and after.

APPLE PENCIL — Apple had famously said they would never make a stylus. When an engineer found a way to make one work, the harder question from design leadership was: should we? The concern was whether a pencil would compete with multitouch — making iPad feel incomplete if you left it at home. We mapped everything pencil could do across iOS, prototyped marking styles we thought were compelling, and used that work to answer both questions: yes we should, and here is what the hardware needs to be to make it great. Introduced in 2015.

FORCE TOUCH TRACKPAD — We invented both the interaction and the mechanism. The trackpad doesn't actually click — it measures force and pulls the trackpad to the side less than 0.1mm, fast enough that your finger can't distinguish it from a real button press. The click is an illusion. That freed us to design a trackpad that senses force as a new dimension of input, clicks uniformly anywhere on the surface, and takes up less vertical space than a trackpad that physically travels down to click. In every MacBook and Magic Trackpad since 2015.

MULTI-TOUCH TRACKPAD — We explored, designed, and prototyped the zoom and swipe gesture vocabulary that became the foundation of how people use a Mac. We created fluid gestures where the interface moves directly in response to your fingers so you can understand the correspondence between your fingers and the screen. A part of every Mac and macOS since the first MacBook Air in 2008.

iPAD — We explored what a touchscreen computer could mean before there was a product category for it. Years later, when the question was whether to make a larger iPad and how big, we designed prototypes of multitasking and a full-sized keyboard to find out. The answer was yes, and those explorations informed what iPad Pro needed to be.

I have worked on lots, and lots of other things I wish I could tell you about, but I can't.

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April, 2026