“Isn’t Microsoft Windows the story of M stealing A’s innovation?”
Not really. They both collaborated to steal Xerox’s technology and created the Mac OS together. Gates knew that MS would probably come out with their own GUI interface, so he made an agreement with them to not release the any MS mouse-based software until one year after the Mac release date. The problem was, the Mac release got delayed, but the date in the contract was a firm date. So, when MS followed the contract and announced Windows first, Jobs blew up and claimed they ripped him off ever since.
Yup the Xerox Star from PARC ran Smalltalk and was years ahead of the first Macs. Due to corporate blindness they never exploited the technology.
Apple copied it to develop the Mac. The Mac was designed with a GUI from the outset, they dropped the Apple II OS. MS took years to catch up because they grafted Windows on top of MSDOS.