[jbjb]

Originally Posted by Quoth

iPhone 2007: Smartphone 1998 and capacitive touch in 1980s. Wasn't used on phones & PDA so that higher resolution (resistive) could be used for signatures, annotation, handwriting recognition. The "innovation" for success was a the all in one big data allowance with one operator per country for consumers vs people paying per second connect time or per Mbyte used for business users. They bought in Samsung CPU (that innovated flash and RAM piggy backed in the package & screen and Fingerworks GUI.

The iPhone was a huge leap ahead of its predecessors terms of usability. Agreed, there were smartphones before then, but Apple did the work to produce a game-changing product.

iPod: Again late to party. The "innovation" was deal for 99c per track with studios. Upset musicians of concept albums. Makes an entire album more expensive than CD.

Again, a leap ahead in usability. The click wheel interface in the first generation was a great innovation.

iPad: Really very late. Tablet computing maybe from 1994?

Again, Apple came up with a product that was streets ahead of its predecessors.

So it's not quibble. Apple developed Apple II, Lisa, Mac, GUI, brought in the OS X based on NextStep (Job's failed Company)

Apple acquired NeXT in 1997.

Apple developed an all in one PC (iMac), an idea from late 1970s. They developed the iPod, the iPhone based on marketing clevers on an established market. Similarly the iPad and Apple Watch.

You seem to be using developed as a somewhat disparaging description, which is unfair. I'd say Apple deserves credit for taking raw ideas and making compelling products - there's a huge amount of work in that. All innovation is based on work that's gone before - that doesn't reduce its impressiveness.

The Apple Silicon was developed by a bought in ARM cpu design company.

Apple Silicon was designed in-house (and uses ARM technology, but that's not exactly uncommon). Yes, they recruited people, and acquired teams to do it, but that's totally normal. When you branch into a new area of technology, you need to recruit the expertise. Pretty much every high tech company of any size is a mass of acquisitions - that doesn't mean you can dismiss the work those people do after the acquisition as not really being the work of the acquiring company.