The cult of apple, like any cult, is annoying.
But I don't recall being able to speak to smarterchild (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmarterChild), nor it being portable, nor it being able to help me schedule appointments, send emails and texts, start phone calls, give me directions and addresses for my personal contacts lists, etc.
Face it. Nothing apple does is innovative according to your narrow definition - they are at least one year behind in most of their technology (they are using last year's cellular network because the current crop of chipsets for 4G are too power hungry).
It's the whole that's innovative
enough.
Look at hardware specs? PCs and android phones win by a longshot.
Look at individual features? The iphone has nothing that doesn't exist in a better form somewhere else.
Look at user experience? The overall user experience of iOS system, including the app store, the hardware, the "cloud", etc - nothing else compares. Yes, you can do most of these things with android, wm7, and even blackberry now. But none of those things do all that the iPhone does out of the box with everything working together.
I suppose it depends on your definition of innovation. Taken down to its basic functionality, Siri doesn't do much that can't be done elsewhere.
But show me a device at any time in the past or the near future that does everything that a vanilla iPhone does with Siri.
)
