That's not clear, that if Apple didn't do something, someone else would have. It might be true of technology when the elements of advancement are in the air, bu

That's not clear, that if Apple didn't do something, someone else would have. It might be true of technology when the elements of advancement are in the air, but this is about design. If Eiffel hadn't designed the Tower in Paris, you can't claim someone else would have. Or more clearly, if Jackson Pollack hadn't painted No. 5, we can't accurately claim it was inevitable someone else would have. There may have been a mobile web, but it isn't necessarily true that it would have been so restrictive. Apple created those tools, such as lock the page to prevent zooming, and it doesn't follow at all that someone else would have thought to prevent mobile browsers from zooming, even if someone else had come up with a zooming mobile browser. Beyond this, your argument is employing what's known as the fallacy of inevitability: nothing in history has ever been inevitable, and when you consider the chaotic nature of change over time, it should be obvious.