[lotyrin]

I personally don't find any of their products to be very interesting or inspiring. The ideas were all in the ether already as far as I cared about them.

Of course, Apple managed to realize them, polish them and place them in the hands of consumers and developers and thereby create viable markets based around the ideas (even for competitors), and while that's definitely a feat of engineering and marketing, many people (myself included) simply don't care about that part.

The only part I care about is that it's driving money towards tech such that there are R&D resources for developing new products (at the level of ARM chip designs or battery tech) that might make new kinds of products viable (from an engineering, not consumer marketing standpoint).