Apple is especially open to criticism here because in all of these cases, Apple was by no means the originator of the innovations. We're all familiar with the Xerox GUI saga, and I saw multi-touch UIs demonstrated in TED videos several years before the iPhone came out.
But Apple also deserves some praise: their unique strength has been in designing commercially viable products that integrate technologies that are still very early in the adoption curve, providing the marketing force that's needed to push new tech into the mainstream. They've also been very effective at breaking the logjam in established industries that have held back certain innovations (digital music distribution and consumer smartphones come to mind).
This has been enormously valuable for the technology industry as a whole, and has often opened the frontier for Microsoft, Google, and others. We probably wouldn't have Android devices now if Apple hadn't used their marketing prowess to get the phone carriers to accept the entire category.
But Apple also deserves some praise: their unique strength has been in designing commercially viable products that integrate technologies that are still very early in the adoption curve, providing the marketing force that's needed to push new tech into the mainstream. They've also been very effective at breaking the logjam in established industries that have held back certain innovations (digital music distribution and consumer smartphones come to mind).
This has been enormously valuable for the technology industry as a whole, and has often opened the frontier for Microsoft, Google, and others. We probably wouldn't have Android devices now if Apple hadn't used their marketing prowess to get the phone carriers to accept the entire category.