Yep, I'm sure Apple was completely blindsided by this until they saw Samsung's announcement, and definitely set up a brand new research project to try to duplicate Samsung's success with iris scanners.
Or maybe, just maybe, Apple has ongoing research projects and prototypes for all sorts of tech that hasn't seen the light of day yet (and might never make it out of the labs). And folks who don't understand this hear some story about some specific research project, like an iris scanner, and assume that because "Apple is working on it", it will definitely show up in the next model of iPhone or iPad or Mac. And then they declare "Apple is putting an iris scanner in the 201X iPhone", and some industry analyst picks it up and repeats it, and then the story makes it to MacRumors, where people can say, "oh no, Apple is copying Samsung

". Rather than, "one of the hundreds of things Apple has been toying with in the labs is iris scanners."