Read BaldiMac below. He gets it.
yet it doesnt make it any less true.
Apple, And even samsung are not usually "first" players. Despite what the Cult of Job's will believe.
No one should deny their impact in the social relevance of many technologies. Nobody denies that without the iPhone, the modern day Cellular Smart Phone
MIGHT be completely different, or behind. I don't think anyone in this thread is saying that.
no one is truly denying that Smartphones were niche products before the iphone. but they did exist. There are some who would be ignorant to this fact. Smartphones were very business oriented and never truly consumer focused till the iPhone, but Blackberries existed since 2000, Palm has smartphones runing both Palm OS and Windows as early as 2002, even HTC had something out pre-iphone (that sexy slider running windows).
the watch market COULD be the same. we don't know yet cause we dont know what Apple has up it's sleeve. But the concept of Smart Watches isn't new. Apple didn't come up with it first, and it's not like they suddenly thought up the idea without seeing what was already happening in the Market. We've had 'smart' watches since the 80's, where companies have attempted to shove things in like Calculators, phone books, calenders, media players, heck, there was even a TV watch! NEC, Sony for examples already have full screen watches that link up to your smartphone in the market for over a year. Will Apple do better? We don't know. there's hope that their 'think tanks' can put together something more than a niche product, but we don't know that yet. Same goes for Samsung. So anyone who claim outright "apple will do it better" is absolutely drinking the cool aid. We just don't know!
But to say that Apple is some supreme god of innovation and comes up with things nobody else has ever done, and they're the only company that can ever do well is borderline... religious.
you have to admit that when you're a fan of the industry as a whole and want the best products for everyone, and in the mindset that tools and toys to fit needs and desires, strict adheration to one company without even aknowledging that there is history before it, or that ideas are almost communal. They don't come from a vacuum and Apple really in this regard isn't different than those already before them. What they do, They do execution extremely beautifully well. I will never deny it. I fell in love with the iPod range when they came out, the Touches are beautifull devices, the iphone is absolutely a rudder for what has come out after it.
But there are many people, if you read through this thread alone who believe that Apple literally invented every piece of technology that they use today and everyone else copied them and it's impossible that those ideas existed before.