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It's hard to argue that they have not made some of the most important inventions of the past 100 years: - A personal computer that people could afford (Apple II) - Nice GUIs, window based operating system, etc for the masses (Macintosh) - Best designed MP3 player (iPod) - the first smartphone that people liked (iPhone)

Yes, a lot of these were inspired by prior work but iPhone still brought critical (often 10x) advances to each one—lowering the cost of the Apple II, designing a touch screen interface that worked, etc.

If for marketing you mean product marketing and management then yeah. Apple is very good at figuring out what is the zeitgeist and package the perfect product for the market. It took them a while to figure out the formula and I argue Scully was actually a good mentor to Jobs in that sense (plus his multiple professional failures before coming back to Apple).

How do you define "better"?