Palm had the grid icon layout for years before apple did it, but nobody would confuse an old palm device with an iphone when actually using it, and palm in fact had to throw it out and start all over with the pre to deliver an iphone competitor.
There's a big difference between a good concept and a good execution of a concept. Apple have always been brilliant at execution, even if they don't have many original concepts (they don't do basic research). Is it not innovative to take a good idea and execute it better than anyone before? I find that a hard thing to dismiss. However, now that they are on top of the world, it would be nice to see them invest in open basic research to give back to the community where they got all their ideas and technologies from, like microsoft does with microsoft research.
Palm was influenced by the Newton, the device that coined the term PDA (actually coined by John Scully) which came out before the Palm Pilot. Computing didn't stat in the 21st century, neither did it start in the 1990's.
RE giving back to the community; FreeBSD, CUPS, WebKit, LLVM and Clang to name a few. Notice I haven't claimed that any of these were directly invented by Apple, but all have varying levels of investment and contribution from Apple.
This is all out there on the internet. It takes a couple of seconds to look up with whatever search engine fits in with your ideology.
There's a big difference between a good concept and a good execution of a concept. Apple have always been brilliant at execution, even if they don't have many original concepts (they don't do basic research). Is it not innovative to take a good idea and execute it better than anyone before? I find that a hard thing to dismiss. However, now that they are on top of the world, it would be nice to see them invest in open basic research to give back to the community where they got all their ideas and technologies from, like microsoft does with microsoft research.