Apple II was pre-dated by many other personal computers. It wasn’t even that big of a seller, being way outsold by many options from Commodore (who still holds the record for the greatest sales of any model of computer).
As far as the first mass-market GUI OS, define mass market. The Macs were a small player in the market, the C64s and PCs greatly eclipsing what the Mac had. The GEOS on the C64 sold something like 1.5 million copies, about 5 times more than the Mac at the time.
The iPod? Portable MP3 players had been in commercial production for 6-7 years before the iPod. Rio and Creative both had strong presence in the market.
Apple’s been much more a “take an idea and polish it to a high degree” than to actually innovate or create new concepts. Which is what you state. That’s not innovation, though - that’s simply execution on an existing idea.
And as far as bigger gross? Not a chance. Siemens, Samsung, LG, and several others (including Microsoft) gross more than Apple.
Yes - others were first, but those others - including the VIC and such weren't the reason IBM faced up to the reality that they couldn't stay out of the personal computer market; the Apple II was.Apple’s been much more a “take an idea and polish it to a high degree” than to actually innovate or create new concepts. Which is what you state. That’s not innovation, though - that’s simply execution on an existing idea.
But I don't think you will question that, precisely because Apple has been the leader in fit and finish of its software as well as its hardware, Microsoft has followed Apple - the Mac being the salient example, followed years later by the first successful version of Microsoft Windows - version 3.0.The Mac was not the PC sales leader, it's true - the IBM PC took that niche. But it was followed by those who did have the big market share. It doesn't seem right to me to say that the Mac wasn't "mass market" - GUI existed only on really expensive workstations before the Mac. I was too frugal back then to buy an early a Mac - but I could have bought one.
The Apple II wasn't the game-changing innovation. That was the Apple I, which was relatively cheap, came with a completely assembled board, and allowed easy connection of a monitor and keyboard. That the Woz was a genius at simplifying circuitry helped a lot with that. Competitors of the time were the likes of the Altair, run with toggle switches and LEDs. In 1977 the Apple ][ packaged this innovation in a case with a keyboard and made it expandable. The Commodore PET and TRS-80 were released later that year.
As far as the first mass-market GUI OS, define mass market. The Macs were a small player in the market, the C64s and PCs greatly eclipsing what the Mac had.
Mass market: In this case I would say the general consumer and small business computer markets, plus educational. In other words, not the niche enterprise market of the other GUI of the time, the Xerox Star ($100,000+ for a system with a few terminals).
GEOS leveraged the existence and sales of millions of cheap C64 computers to get into market. With the exception of the retro-computing enthusiast crowd, it quickly died out. Costing several times as much as a C64, the Mac still sold over a quarter million in the year before GEOS was even released.
Apple’s been much more a “take an idea and polish it to a high degree” than to actually innovate or create new concepts.
I'd still call that innovation, taking a so-so niche and reinventing it so that it becomes very popular. Apple is usually the first to make one that "just works." For example, iPod, iPhone and iPad. None were the first of their market. Digital music players were still in the geek toy niche before the iPod, touch phones so far had not been very good and stylus phones still reigned in that category before the iPhone, and consumers soundly rejected tablets until the iPad. Back to the iPod, Apple also didn't just make a device, but developed an entire ecosystem of the device with iTunes and the iTunes Store, and did the same with the iPhone and iPad. And don't forget, Jobs personally was also the one who got the major record labels to cave in and allow songs to be sold online by somebody else without draconian restrictions. So you can say he also reinvented the online music store.
None of this counts Apple's constant innovation in manufacturing methods and materials.
On the basic question of innovation, you have to ask yourself why Apple's product rarely looks like what came before, and why afterwards other products tend to look more and more like Apple's.