Coverflow wasn't even developed in-house at Apple, they acquired it. According to wikipedia "Cover Flow was conceived by artist Andrew Coulter Enright[1] and or

Coverflow wasn't even developed in-house at Apple, they acquired it. According to wikipedia "Cover Flow was conceived by artist Andrew Coulter Enright[1] and originally implemented by an independent Macintosh developer, Jonathan del Strother. Enright later named the interaction style fliptych to distinguish it from the particular Cover Flow implementation.[2]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_Flow