If Apple hadn’t made the iPad, it’s pretty safe to say no one else would be making multi-touch tablets either. Look at how long it’s taking for any competition to arrive - even from the largest PC makers on the planet, even with an example to copy. Likewise, with no iPhone there’d be no Android and we’d all be punching keys on screen-stifled, use-impaired, plastic phones that only did four things well.

Others primarily copy rather than create, Apple primarily creates, rather than copies. That’s why PC makers envy Apple: they can’t define categories, they just compete for a share of them once they’re defined. In the absence of the ability to creatively redefine, you have to pile up feature-lists and reduce quality to make a profit. That’s inevitably a race to the bottom.