Pretty much what it’s been doing for the past few years.

(Inspired by analysts and pundits. Written by someone who doesn’t want to be one of those guys.)

A lot of tech blogs have been linking to videos of Apple’s 2007 keynote, during which the iPhone was revealed. It’s worth watching it if you’ve time, not only to see one of the finest Steve Jobs keynotes (he was in great form that day), but also to remind yourself of just what happened in 2007.

People easily forget. We take for granted what has already been invented, and we consider smart, intuitive, sleek solutions the ‘obvious’ way. This, it’s argued, is now the way things have to be—there is no other way. At least, that’s the argument put forward by many of the current slew of companies watching everything Apple does, and then scrambling to copy it as quickly as possible. Smartphones, tablets, so-called ‘ultrabooks’ and even the Apple TV (hardly a massive success for Apple) have all been mercilessly ripped off in recent years. (For some particularly blatant examples, check Inspired by Apple.)

Now watch that keynote. Remember what smartphones were like in 2007, and how annoying and fiddly they were to use. It’s telling when you watch the various Jobs reveals; the audience gasps in astonishment and is genuinely thrilled by the iPhone’s various gestures, such as slide-to-unlock and pinch-zoom. This isn’t the usual ‘Steve said something so we must cheer’ that often went on at Apple events—this is genuine excitement at something new, something different, and something revolutionary.

But we forget. Multitouch is obvious. Pinch-zoom is obvious. Slide-to-unlock is obvious. The manner in which Apple designed its iPhone, its iPad, and even iOS itself? Obvious. Then why didn’t anyone else do this stuff first? Why did it take Apple’s iPhone to kickstart a smartphone and tablet revolution? If the slew of cloners out there all argue Apple didn’t really invent anything new, why didn’t they have iPhone- and iPad-like devices in the market before Apple? Why did Google’s Android rather rapidly shift from being a BlackBerry to an iPhone if the iPhone was so obvious?

The only obvious things for me here are that people need to think a little more before dismissing out of hand Apple’s current anger at practically every other major tech company effectively lifting its designs and ideas and reselling them, and that its rivals—with a few exceptions—need to learn to iterate and innovate, rather than just getting out their photocopiers yet again.

ION Audio has unveiled the next iterations of its iCade system (MacRumors). I reviewed the iCade in May last year, and was later dumbfounded by Taito and Atari churning out its own equivalents. A recent iCade fire-sale in the UK led to me finally buying a unit of my own (my review having been done on a loaner from ION), and, in hindsight, companies knocking anything up to 50 per cent off of the iCade should have been an indicator a new model was due. However, ION unveiled three.

First, there’s the iCade Core. This is essentially the iCade without the cabinet—you just get the plastic base with a joystick and eight buttons. It’s hard to tell from the photography on offer, but assuming the iPad can rest in landscape as well as portrait, I think this is a smart move on ION’s part. The cabinet version is cute and quirky, but it’s also a space-hog and very much geared at old farts like me. The iCade Core looks more like a standard games controller, which means less character but wider appeal. Bar more support from developers, the price will be the biggest factor in its success. I was happy paying 40 quid for my iCade, but there’s no way I’d have paid double that.

Next up, there’s iCade Mobile. This makes an iOS device like an iPhone or iPod touch resemble a PSP. You get a D-pad, four face buttons and four shoulder buttons. There are two clever pieces of engineering that put this above other controllers I’ve so far seen: the device sits very snugly in the controller’s rubber enclosure, and it can be rotated 90 degrees, enabling you to use iCade Mobile for portrait games. Again, support and pricing could be a problem: $79.99 seems a bit high.

Finally, there’s iCade Jr, which is on the wrong side of mental. It’s a miniaturised version of the original iCade, designed for the iPhone and iPod touch. I know I should hold judgment until actually using the unit, but it just seems bonkers. The original iCade is just about big enough for what it’s trying to do and be: a home arcade. iCade Jr looks like it will be extremely fiddly, and unless it has a brick in the base, it won’t have the weight to hold your device steady while you play. (If you’ve used an iCade, you’ll know that’s not a problem with the original unit.) Also, putting four of the buttons on the back of the controller seems like a recipe for usability nightmares.

Still, two out of three isn’t bad. I’m still not a huge fan of additional controllers for iOS, and I strongly believe that even most ‘traditional’ games (racers, platformers, and so on) can work fine with touch controls if the developer is careful. However, if there are going to be more typical controllers for iOS, I’d hope they’d be of a high quality and, crucially, designed specifically for the system. The iCade Mobile certainly seems like it nails the latter of those things, and I’m looking forward to checking out the former when I can get my hands on a review model.

Not content with churning out yet another in a long line of MacBook Air clones, Acer’s announced AcerCloud. To be fair, apart from the functionality and Steve Jobs’s presentation, Acer’s service is pretty much nothing like Apple’s. If we totally ignore its PicStream feature, which is nothing at all like Photo Stream, honest, and the ’30 days’ content stream, which is totally different to Apple’s ’30  days’ content stream, it’s like an entirely new thing. Which essentially means Acer used a slightly different shade of blue in its slides.

Look, I know Apple didn’t invent cloud services. I’m not stupid. But this cloning thing is just crazy. What does Acer hope to achieve with this, bar some short-term press and also quite a bit of ridicule? Unlike Apple, it cannot back iCloud with a content ecosystem. More to the point, it’s offering nothing new, something shared by the vast majority of companies in tech.

Perhaps waiting to see what Apple does and copying it will remain a viable strategy for these companies. But the one thing they should be trying to copy is Apple’s ability to iterate. Apple has rarely invented new things, but it has taken existing systems and heavily reworked them. It didn’t invent computers, but the Apple II brought a number of features to home computing that hadn’t before been widely available, in a system that was relatively simple to use. It didn’t invent WIMP-based computing, but Mac OS moved on concepts invented at XEROX in a big way.

MP3 players existed before the iPod, but it was Apple’s device that propelled them into the mainstream, largely through thinking how they should be done, not how they were already done. Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, but it was the first to make one that was a pleasure to use, and that you didn’t want to hurl out of the window, in a desperate hope of hitting one of the UI designers. And Apple didn’t invent the tablet, but it sure feels like that sometimes with the iPad, which was the first of these devices to really work in a seamless fashion.

The first company to start innovating and iterating really has a big chance of grabbing more of the space Apple’s nabbed—not only in sales but also in grabbing headlines for doing new things, rather than just ripping off something that exists. There will be a diminishing space for other players, where only the giants will remain (Samsung, Dell, and so on). Everyone else is, in the long term, screwed—and they only have themselves to blame, the copycats.

Hat-tip: The Verge.

There are plenty of rumours flying around about an Apple television. My hope is that Apple won’t enter the TV space directly—I think doing so is unnecessary and risky, and I can’t see much value that Apple could bring. Instead, I’d like to see the existing Apple TV move from being a hobby to a unit every iOS device owner must own, simply because it’s so fab.

Right now, it’s not there, but it has potential. On its own, it’s a reasonable piece of kit for movie rentals. If your Apple TV’s wired into an amp, it’s a great means of getting music from your iOS devices to your home music system. Using AirPlay, it’s also possible to stream a bunch of content, including files incompatible with iTunes, should you invest in AirVideo or streamtome. (And by ‘invest’, I mean ‘spend a couple of bucks’—it’s not like apps are expensive.) Should Apple power-up the Apple TV and reduce lag, it’s also going to become a great gaming device.

The main sticking point for me with the Apple TV remains television programming. In the UK, TV series are far too expensive (anything up to double what you’d pay for a DVD box-set) and many popular series are absent. The US gets things better, merely being lumbered with overpriced content. One of the very few Apple rumours I’m happy to believe is that TV companies are reluctant to cave to Apple’s demands, in making their shows cheaper or more readily available, because, well, um… THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!

Apple totally destroyed the music industry, didn’t it? Steve Jobs totally wrecked things for those guys, and made Apple far too powerful in that space. Particularly terrible things Apple has done include:

• encouraging more people to buy digital music, rather than just downloading it from the naughtyweb;
• convincing labels to drop DRM, leading to people being able to do what they want with digital music purchases, thereby leading to more sales;
• effectively monetising pirated music, through iTunes Match.

You can see why TV companies won’t cede any measure of ‘control’ to Apple. They might encourage more people to buy digital content, rather than downloading for free! Maybe Apple could somehow figure out how to monetise downloaded content with the video equivalent of iTunes Match, thereby making studios more money! And, um… …  …

No, it turns out I don’t get it either. Maybe those guys just really like shiny discs?

(Note: I know the real sticking point that gets TV companies’ knickers in a twist is Apple’s cut, but NEWSFLASH: a large chunk of something is a bigger figure than all of nothing.)