Shiny (external design) is only part of the story. Hardware, software, and infrastructure also matter. The iPhone had an attractive and functional industrial de

Shiny (external design) is only part of the story. Hardware, software, and infrastructure also matter. The iPhone had an attractive and functional industrial design (barring occasional missteps like antennagate) but its multitouch screen and UI, full-featured email, web browser, and music player were critical. On the infrastructure side, Apple negotiated "unlimited" data rates to prevent carriers from crippling the iPhone, and within a year had developed an App Store ecosystem that eventually scaled from a few thousand developers to hundreds of thousands. End-to-end execution matters (Apple's vertical integration helps with this) and it's a big part of the difference between invention and innovation.