honestly probably the iPhone 4. iPad two perhaps, Retina didn't do much for it other than miss out on battery life. I think the note is a great phone though, I used one for a couple of months and Samsung really innovated with that stylus and integrating it so well with that phone. Android's notifation center was genius, something that Apple completely copied off of. Although I have a hard time saying that since it was half assed.
What else? LTE isn't really an innovation but I feel it should have been standard in phones by now. It's not so much the lack of innovation that bothers me as much as Apple releasing half-assed products for the past couple of years. iMessage was really the only notable release, hardly innovative though (bbm). 4s and iPad three have horrible batteries. OSX ML has been a terrible release so far. My macbook's battery has been halved in the same amount of usage, and no real notable upgrades.
I personally think retina was an innovation as it was not something other phone manufacturers were doing and it made a tremendous difference in the quality of the display.
Didn't Android copy someone else on the notification center? I don't recall but thought I read that somewhere.
I don't consider a stylus innovative in any manner as it has been around for so long. Perhaps the pressure sensitivity would be considered innovative. But I honestly have no use for it. I've bought one for my iPad and I never use it. But I do see how others find it valuable...just not for me.
My new iPad has a great battery and my 4S is good too.....but either way, Apple isn't exactly in the battery business. They rely on the battery manufacturers to innovate. Not sure there's a lot they can do there. Don't blame Apple for your MacBook battery issues by any means.
So what we've come up with is a pretty small list of innovations and we've determined what I thoguht we would....it's not innovation that is really the issue here. And I think what you mean to point out is Apple is slow to update features, but except for very few notable exceptions, they've always been this way so I don't understand the frustration??