The clone market just about killed Apple. Apple’s model has long been to be a hardware company that makes its own proprietary OS that seamlessly runs on its own hardware (it is really hard to compare OS’s built to run on specific hardware vs. an OS that has to be bloated to run on an insane variety of unpredictable components and quality (or lack of) build.
But at the same time - as Apple attempted to shift its model to the OS side of marketing - they dropped the ball several times. They hoped that licensing the OS to 3rd Party makers would help. Sadly - some major quality control and poor engineering plagued those makers - which further tarnished lackluster Apple’s “System Software”... Jobs came back, cleaned house, and picked Apple up and set it on a much better footing (returning to the great/desirable hardware model with its own OS as the model).
As an Apple outsider it seems to me that Apple’s big leap forward in desktop computers/laptops was moving to Intel processors. Big leaps #2 and #3 were iphones and ipads. Out of these three, iPhone was the leap that made and makes the most money (income) and profits.