As the author points out, Apple is fairly unique in its command of vertical integration. Its products are unique not on their feature merits, but because of the way they are conceived, designed, built, sourced, manufactured, shipped, marketed, sold, opened, held, and used.

There's another part of this: Apple is fairly unique amongst it's (asymmetric) competitors (e.g. Google, MS, Samsung) in that it only focuses on one customer: The Consumer.

In my experience the behaviors and culture of an organization (large or small) that focuses on the Consumer as a customer is diametrically incompatible with the behaviors and culture of an organization that focuses on Business as a customer. (I feel super strongly that this is a key reason Microsoft's products are often good, but not excellent; the consumer ones and the business ones).

EDIT: I decided to write a full blog post as a response: http://ceklog.kindel.com/2013/02/19/why-nobody-can-copy-appl...