Runner up

The times Apple came second in the tech race.

1 Usb

1998’s iMac was first to ditch the old serial and parallel ports entirely. But other PCs had offered USB before this, developed at Intel with partners not including Apple.

2 The iPod

Inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, the name was new, but portable digital MP3 players were already common. The iPod’s innovation was its tiny hard disk — later dropped for the same flash memory everyone else used.

3 The App store

By 2008, Windows Mobile had a store with 18,000 apps; PDA maker Palm claimed 30,000. So the iPhone wasn’t first. But hitting 250,000 apps within two years was something very new.

4 Touchscreens

The iPhone’s capacitive multi–touch display beat monochrome stylus screens such as the Newton MessagePad’s. Even color PDAs such as Sharp’s EM– ONE, launched months after the iPhone, had clumsy resistive screens. So Apple was kind of first, using tech it bought in 2005. Bell Labs demoed capacitive multi– touch in 1984.

5 The graphical user interface

Windows, icons, menus and the pointer came together at Xerox PARC. After Apple’s visits in 1979, the Lisa paved the way and the Macintosh finally mainstreamed the GUI. Xerox profited more from its Apple shares than its computers.

6 The notch

The camera notch that marred the iPhone X’s edge– to–edge screen was cannily marketed as a feature. But 2015’s LG V10 had a sort of notch at its top left, while the Essential Phone PH1, from Android inventor Andy Rubin, had a keyhole notch six months before Apple’s.