Ah, the old "incremental improvements" canard.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/creation-myth

The Mac was not an imitation Alto. Xerox tried and failed subsequently to commercialize the Alto. The iPod was not an imitation Diamond Rio; the iPod could fit in your pocket and hold most people's entire music collection, rather than a few dozen songs. IPhones are not Blackberries; the latter were black & white email centric keyboard centric non-touch business centric devices with modest compute and consumer media features and no comparable app & music ecosystem. iPads are not Microsoft Tablet PC's. Microsoft has launched generations of tablets going back to the late 80's/early 90's, none of which were very successful.

> People buy from whoever makes the best product at the best price.

People buy from whoever does the best marketing (that is, whoever makes them feel like they are getting the best product for them.)

> Regular consumers can careless about who had the original idea

(Nitpick: "careless" is not the same thing "care less")

Regular consumers probably do care about originality, which is why being "the original X" often plays a key role in marketing, in products in a wide array of different markets. If it wasn't something consumers tended to care about, it wouldn't likely be a perennial marketing point.

It is, of course, not the only thing consumers care about, obviously.

> they only care about who executed best

Arguably, they don't care directly about who executed best, they care about who they trust to execute best for them. Evidence about having executed well to others, like being the original in a category, may be indicators by which consumers judge that likelihood.