Research the price of the machine at XeroxPARC vs. the first Mac. As I recall (I invite correction) $80,000 vs. $2,495.
Also, compare the feature sets of the Xerox device vs. the Mac. Apple took the paper/folder/desktop metaphor and the mouse pointer and the pulldown menu and put it on retail shelves. Xerox didn't do that at all. Microsoft only did it after Gates threw a quiet fit upon seeing the Lisa.
All Apple did was make it happen. No small feat in a green-on-black "C:/>" world.
Xerox voluntarily gave up on the GUI. I know it seems hard to believe, but at that time they were simply into basic research. Computers were practically a hobby for them. They wanted to build copiers, not computers. Yes, Apple "made it happen" - just like Gates "made it happen" from his purchase of the original Windows source code while IBM got into the disaster that was OS/2. The similarities between the rise of MSFT and the rise of Apple are really astonishing when you look at them - both got their start because the real originators either decided to take a pass or just got off track somewhere along the line. To say that Apple has somehow succeeded at building on the original idea where Microsoft failed flies in the face of history. Both "built and built and built" on the original ideas.
There wasn't anything original about what Jobs did...Research the price of the machine at XeroxPARC vs. the first Mac. As I recall (I invite correction) $80,000 vs. $2,495.
Price is driven down the supply curve by production quantity. That is, the innovation in question is simply figuring out how to make a lot of Macs economically enough to be able to make a profit in the market.As the Russians put it (tho probably in Russian rather than English), "Quantity is a quality all its own."