Regarding the iWhatever, Apple isn't really an innovation company. They take what other people do, make it better and popularize it.
You say "they take what other people do, make it better and popularize it" all in one breath and trivialize Apple to such a degree it's not even funny. For your infotainment, Apple does not "popularize" their products, the consumer does. We do it with our wallets. Did Apple "popularize" The Cube? No. If it was as simple as you make it sound, they sure as hell would have.
No. What Apple does of late (especially the iPod) is take the MP3 player, which had a very modest presence in the marketplace and builds it into a device that now accounts for about half its revenue. It intergrates perfectly with their online music store which again, while not the first, has grown into by far the largest ever, selling an amount of music, tv shows, movies, books and music videos that would have seemed a mere pipedream just 5 years ago.
And let's consider the iPod 2001 -- 5GB, monocrome screen, played music only, had the most modest calendar and sold for $399. Was Apple afraid to release such an "expensive" product? No. The press went wild about its expense but the public said (with their wallets) "this is worth the price". Skip, skip, skip ahead... and the iPhone is starting to be released amongst the same price negativity. It's going to be interesting.
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We all know what competition is. Competition is many companies in the same business, all with roughly the same product. Pros and cons abound and from advertising, positive word of mouth and proper comparison, the consumer makes his choice. What very few companies are able to do is design such a product that while there exists "competition", in essence, there really isn't due to the overwhelming success of the company on top. I have a hard time thinking of any one company who has such a breakaway product in their prospective field that mirrors Apple's success with their music player. It's that rare.
[Edit: One obvious overwhelming success story is Microsoft. With 95% of the computers running their OS, they essentially have no competition. Odd that they seem to be always playing catch-up with Apple.]
In this day and age, it's all about "building a better mouse trap", which I suppose is MAX1P-speak for "taking what other people do and make it better and popularize it." Until we can learn how to make things invisible or teleport things through the air by breaking down their molecules, the inventors of this world are pretty much stuck with taking what other people do and making it better.
About Inventors. said:
Thomas Edison's greatest challenge was the development of a practical incandescent, electric light. Contrary to popular belief, he didn't "invent" the lightbulb, but rather he improved upon a 50-year-old idea.
link
Yep... Thomas Edison copied. It was a 50-year old idea. But, thank God he did.
But I actually think you're mistaken on this point. I think that Apple is plenty inventive. And so would the U.S. Patent office.
