>At its soul, Apple is a software company that also makes their own hardware. Nokia was a hardware company that also made their own software.

... and bad software, of course. Worse than that, multiple versions of bad software.

Apple is the only company in history to build consistently good hardware and good software and UI. Not IBM, not DEC or the other Seven Dwarfs. It really does go all the way back to the Woz-Jobs duo providing a maniacal focus on UX and one of the most brilliant engineering minds of the century.

(I'm told that Tesla also qualifies.)