The difference is between picking up your phone to get one vs. using your smartphone. Uber was first to market, but it's silly to pretend that without them it wouldn't have happened. That's like calling the Pizza Hut app a clone of the Domino's app, because they both order pizzas and Domino's came out first. Ultimately Uber is a newfangled (and more convenient) front-end to a service that has pre-dates itself by a wide, wide margin.
The extension from "call the car company to get a car" to "use an app to get a car" is a pretty obvious innovation, particularly in NYC.
Google wasn't the first search engine. Apple didn't make the first music player. Facebook wasn't the first social network.
Being unique doesn't matter a single bit. Only thing that matters is that people are using them. And that's the case with Uber. Judge however you will their shady tactics, but it's ridiculous to downplay their success based on that.
