Apple had a very unique position at that time: the had legions of iPod fans, who are relatively wealthy, locked on to the Apple platform(due to music they bough

Apple had a very unique position at that time: the had legions of iPod fans, who are relatively wealthy, locked on to the Apple platform(due to music they bought). Than they used that leverage on at&t , which was the weaker carrier in that time - in return only distributing via at&t - at&t agreed to give Apple full control - a thing unheard of in the industry. They repeated similar tactic in every geography. That full control was the thing that enabled them to offer the best user/developer experience like matwood says and ride moore's law curve much better than the rest .