It seems you've forgotten Visual Voicemail. Prior to the iPhone, every phone I ever saw required playing through messages sequentially instead of jumping to what I wanted to hear. That's a huge improvement in usability.

I guess entering a new market with a higher priced product and many established competitors doesn't count as risky if the product is really good? That's hardly a failing.

I guess when man first used fire to cook, you might argue that eating something warm wasn't a new concept. After all, some animals had eaten fresh kill or each others droppings before they cooled off.

The idea of Apple having retail stores wasn't a new concept. Risk there?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/115507/gateway_to_close_all_r...