It always vaguely amuses me when someone comments about "Android originally copying Apple," in such a way as to doubt that it actually happened that way. My first thought when I see such comments is to wonder just how young the poster must be... because surely if they were at least a teenager in 2007, they would very clearly remember the changes that took place after Steve showed off that first iPhone, even if they somehow never watched the actual keynote speech. I mean, those of us who can comfortably call ourselves "old farts" and remember these events lived through a literal revolution in interface design! Sure, some may argue that there were isolated elements of the iPhone in a few random places that Apple (ahem) must have copied... and maybe there's some small element of truth to that. But Apple put those elements together to come up with something genuinely new and unique... and the resulting product (the iPhone) ultimately changed how absolutely everybody interacts with their devices and with each other. How could anyone forget such a thing, even almost two decades later?
If, for some reason, you genuinely don't know what I'm referring to... please, just do a quick google image search for "android before and after iphone." I mean, if I was looking at those image results for the very first time, I suppose I'd be a bit shocked and confused, too, and I might even go looking for further evidence of Android's true origins... but honestly, that evidence really is out there for all to see, and it's not at all difficult to find.
So sure: Apple has copied Xerox, Microsoft, Google and probably quite a few others over the years. But Microsoft really did copy the Mac, lock-stock-and-barrel, and Google really did copy the iPhone, lock-stock-and-barrel. And Apple's ideas -- which so many others have quickly copied -- really have changed the world. This is not a speculative discussion; it's recorded history.
