I think other companies just realize that Apple has already done the work of getting a feature (or style) well known to the public and that they don't need to s

I think other companies just realize that Apple has already done the work of getting a feature (or style) well known to the public and that they don't need to solve the problem in a brand new way. That would require as much engineering and quality control work as Apple, plus you'd have to market the hell out of it so that people understood why it was cool, and then, after all that, still sell the product for way less than Apple's because no one is going to pay an Apple price for a Dell product. No, the way to make money is by paying a couple devs to hack up something that looks really wiz-bang cool in demos with very little regard to the problem it solves. Then you get people to think it's just like an Apple product, but cheaper. Until they use it for a week, but by then they've already bought it. I think the best example of this is all the custom Android skins out there. Without exception they are all worse (at usability) than what they are trying to improve, but the first Droid was the last Android phone to ship stock. Just look cool in the ad and you're done.