[vlunkr]

> It combines proven technologies into polished products.

Is that not innovation? Maybe technically the iPhone was just a combination of existing technologies, but it went above and beyond them to the point that it was essentially new.

[kamaal]

>>Is that not innovation?

Yes but not at the same level of complexity. The processor, electronics, battery technology and manufacturing processes require multi-decade spanning consistent efforts, iterations and investments to make it happen.

Once the difficult part is done. What remains now is building a end user product. Which has its own complexities. But once the hard part is done, the other parts are relatively easy.

[wmil]

More accurately: Apple doesn't bother with early adopter and enthusiast technologies. They wait until the tech is mass market ready and polish it.

There's no real reason for Apple to get into VR yet. They can make a deal with Oculus / Valve / Sony and have a decent VR product supported on Mac in under 6 months.

[dave2000]

No, it's marketing more than innovation.

[allsystemsgo]

I'm sure their hardware engineers would beg to differ.

[secstate]

You mean the hardware engineers they brought onboard when the bought NeXT (OS X)? How about Lala.com (iCloud)? Fingerworks (iOS)? Soundjam MP (iTunes)? We can just go on and on here [1].

None of this is to say they don't have brilliant hardware engineers working on things all the time. But the boldest moves Apple in the past decade and a half have come from strategic M&As.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...