Though I agree with the comments re: Henry Ford's 'people would have asked for a faster horse' (and disappointed that this is now being proposed as Steve's gift to the world, rather than Ford). I don't see where Apple continually does this.

They are rarely first to the market with cutting edge technologies, it seems to me they learn from where others have failed. With the exception of the original Mac, which I believe was the first consumer platform built around the GUI .

Looking at other products, iPod - other hard-drive mp3 players were in the market, usability was horrible as was the tools for getting music on to the devices. Had you asked people what they wanted in an MP3 player, they would have said 'one that I can figure out how to use, get music on, and can carry my entire music collection'.

iPhone - Palm, Windows, Blackberry and Symbian had all already been in the market. Touch screens were just becoming good enough that we didn't need a stylus. Web browsing on the existing devices was horrible. If you had asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'i hate always having to use the stylus (which I often loose), and I want a better way to surf the web'. Let's not forget, Blackberry had maps, apps, and a non-javascript enabled browser. These things weren't new, they just weren't as good.

iPad - Similar to the iPhone, good quality thin touch-screen sizes became available (no need for a stylus). Windows had been making 'tablet' computers for years. There WAS a big innovation here in putting iOS instead of OSX on the device. But we'll have to wait and see when Windows8 comes out if that is actually truly an innovation that people require, or if that is just what we have today. But we should also look to products like the AT&T communicator and Newton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EO_Personal_Communicator as early predecessors to the iPad.

Why is Apple 'revolutionary'?? Personally, I don't think they are. A revolution requires an 'overthrow of a government or social order for a new system'. Hopefully we don't look only at revenues to define a revolution. Apple are evolutionary. What am I doing today because of Apple that I wouldn't be doing if they didn't exist (I'm typing this on a Mac by the way).

I think the Siri technology can be 'revolutionary' depending on how it is implemented. Is there going to be an API that developers can use, and how will they leverage that capability?

Another way I look at is, that Apple is giving us our imagined future, which I don't think is actually revolutionary. Sci-fi films have had touch devices for ever, and we've steadily moved toward making these a reality.

If all of a sudden tomorrow we started teleporting people, that would be revolutionary, as it isn't a small step in our current capabilities, rather it is a giant leap from where we are now.