Absolutely right. And yet, wrong.

Yes, Apple has never invented anything! St. Jobs was not a researcher; his interest was always in using technology, not creating it. And yet, that is exactly why he is the revolutionary guy. All these other companies are always trying to push the boundaries by getting the absolute latest bleeding-edge technology into a package and shoving it out the door the same day. And people will go for that -- even if the design is shoddy, even if the device falls apart in less than a year, people do like to have the latest tech in their hands.

With Apple (at least until recently), you NEVER got the latest tech in your hands. It takes time to craft a quality device, for certain when dealing with the level of quality Jobs demanded. His emphasis on the user interface design, on the simplicity of the device, on the polished ecosystem behind the device, was leaps and bounds beyond what any other phone manufacturer was doing at the time.

The Jobs philosophy has Apple competing on a quality user experience, rather than on features or price. And that is the revolution. That is what keeps people buying Apple products again and again, even when they are more expensive and less powerful than the competition. And, unfortunately, that's also why every "smart phone" today looks like an iPhone; other companies are now trying to compete with Apple by trying to become Apple, which is dumb. We're ending up with iPhone knock-offs that are neither as polished as the iPhone, nor as technically sophisticated as the good old bleeding-edge phones used to be.

Trying to shoehorn the latest tech goodies into a package with a minimalist UI like iOS has is just a recipe for a mess...