Another way to look at it is that for the iPhone to exist, a long string of failures had to exist going back to the PDA market, the Newton, the iPAQ, nokia smar

Another way to look at it is that for the iPhone to exist, a long string of failures had to exist going back to the PDA market, the Newton, the iPAQ, nokia smartphones, etc because the intermediate steps has to be funded to cost and size reduce the components needed until an inflection point was reached. Apple invests at inflection points, after massive R&D spending by others have created many of the pieces needed. You could call it brilliant or you could call it parasitic, I tend to find it a parasitic freerider in a way, not publishing as much research openly, not acquiring or funding as much of the startup community, in general, not funding research for the purpose of research and taking the risk of uneconomical results. This is similar to a University doing research for decades on a Particular drug pathway or health condition and the a pharmaceutical swooping in, taking the end result and patenting a medicine. Sure, they still spend a lot of money on developing the drug and going through medics trials, but public investment on the basics that came before it is what enabled it. I’d like to see more basic R&D funded by Apple, not just product development. More Bell Labs, IBM TJ Watson, Microsoft R&D.