> Apple shouldn't get the blame for all of the other companies following suit
It's not about blame - Apple has repeatedly changed the landscape of computing for decades. Mac, modern laptops, iPhone. Downplay their influence if you will, but they have been the harbinger so often before...
Apple didn't actually invent the modern laptop; that's just Apple PR. The Xerox NoteTaker, Osbourne 1, Dulmont Magnum, Toshiba T1100 and Compaq SLT all get credit for the “first” in different ways – and all in the 80s, before Apple produced a single computer that could be called a “modern laptop”. (Except the NoteTaker, which was 70s.) I vote the Toshiba T1100 as the first modern laptop, btw.
Apple was the first to put a trackball in a laptop (though that laptop was, in the rest of its design, at least five years out of date – hardly modern), invented the laptop palm rest, and – much later – was the first to put an Ethernet port in.
It's not about blame - Apple has repeatedly changed the landscape of computing for decades. Mac, modern laptops, iPhone. Downplay their influence if you will, but they have been the harbinger so often before...