> Agreed. I'm having trouble thinking of any product category where Apple was actually first to market
The dirty little secret is that the first company to market with a new product category almost never succeeds. No one really knows what the market wants or what will make the whole thing come together and take off. Most of the time the discovery never even makes it to market because no one can figure out how to make a real product with it. Execution is as important as innovation.
The iPod was transformative because it was paired with a music store.
The iPhone was transformative because it was a pocket computer that happened to make phone calls and it broke the carrier's stranglehold on hardware and software.
The Mac was the first widespread easy to use GUI. Yes, Xerox had the Alto. So what? They had no idea what to do with it and it was never terribly successful.
When you take an ultra-reductionist approach you can dismiss anything. Dropbox wasn't the first one to sync files over a network. Oh Uber, it's just a fancy way to order a taxi. Airbnb: just a fancy version of classified ads. Instacart? I can pay anyone to go buy my groceries, rich people have been doing that for years. Stripe? We already have a million payment gateways!
