Apple has for a very long time been a marketing and branding innovator. Jobs recognized something important: branding and marketing matters more than technology, but the technology has to be good enough to support the branding and marketing efforts. So he took the company in a direction that was quite clever: wait until the tech was good enough to wrap in a marketable package, then blitz the market with it suggesting they'd been the technology driver the entire time.
It has worked fabulously. Just look at the number of people who think Apple innovated computing at any level: from portable music to smart phones to displays and on and on. These days you're a "tech geek" if you have a couple of Apple devices in your kit. This phenomenon has almost nothing to do with innovation in technology but quite a lot with their marketing efforts to present themselves as fashionable technology innovators.
In the last 20 years or so there aren't very many technologies Apple has actually innovated on that didn't already exist in some form or another, just without the Apple Marketing Magic behind it.
It has worked fabulously. Just look at the number of people who think Apple innovated computing at any level: from portable music to smart phones to displays and on and on. These days you're a "tech geek" if you have a couple of Apple devices in your kit. This phenomenon has almost nothing to do with innovation in technology but quite a lot with their marketing efforts to present themselves as fashionable technology innovators.
In the last 20 years or so there aren't very many technologies Apple has actually innovated on that didn't already exist in some form or another, just without the Apple Marketing Magic behind it.