1. Sticking with the high end market:

They didn't aim to get a share of the lower end market even under enormous pressure from investors to launch a lower priced iPhone. The most they did was launch the iPhone 5C, which was only $100 cheaper than the top of the line iPhone. Samsung which tried to capture the entire spectrum is now paying the price for it by getting squeezed both from the top end (by the new iPhones, LG G3s, Moto Xes etc.) and the bottom end (cheap Chinese Android phones, Android One phones in India etc.).

2. Sticking with the 4" phone for as long as they did:

By keep the 4" design for such a long time, they created such a huge pent up demand for a larger iPhone, that the iPhone 6 and 6+ with larger screens were guaranteed to be a hit no matter what. Now Tim Cook is acting all cool that they could have made a larger iPhone at any time, but the technology wasn't ready. Yeah right. They were just stringing people along and making them wait for the larger iPhone until they could no longer wait.

3. Letting newer technology mature before going live:

NFC + Apple Pay + Touch ID is a marriage made in heaven. Again they let others introduce the technology to the market first, saw how people used it and refined their own product before launching while leveraging some of their own in-house solutions (Touch ID, Apple Pay + iTunes credit cards), guaranteeing a successful adoption. Same goes with the Apple Watch. People are now more interested in wearables and smart watches than they were about 12-18 months ago. The Apple Watch will just come out at the right time as the market demand for Android Wear and other smart wearables is burgeoning.

4. High-end Marketing:

This comes as no surprise. With Beats and Apple Watch, they are now firmly entrenched in the high end sports, music and fashion world, making the Apple brand even stronger. A lot of people were scratching their heads when they saw Apple hiring people from the fashion world with no apparent ties to technology (including their Head of Retail) in the last 12-18 months, but I guess it all makes sense now about what they had in mind all along.

5. Apple TV:

When Apple TV came out, it wasn't very popular. But slowly people saw the benefits of a small streaming device that can stream pretty much anything and mirror your smart phone or tablet screens on your HDTV. Now it is a fixture in the living room of most people that are even slightly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem. The Apple TV concept has since been copied by the Amazon Fire TV and Google's latest Nexus Player. They players have additional features such as games and game controllers, but the concept isn't widely different. It is only a matter of time before Apple releases a new Apple TV that can run iOS apps/games and comes with a controller (or it will allow you to use your iPhone or iPad as controllers).

6. Sticking with the 4:3 ratio on the iPad:

After years of 16:9 aspect ratio Android tablets, the new Nexus 9 is going to be a 4:3 aspect ratio. I think even Google realized that to make the tablet friendly to use both in portrait and landscape mode, it had to 4:3. Widescreen 16:9 is only good for watching movies; in almost every other use case, a 4:3 screen feels more natural.

p.s.

Stuff that Apple hasn't got right in recent times:

iOS 8 -

3rd party keyboards -

Copy Paste/saving images from Safari -

They have certainly dropped the ball on the software side. iOS 8 is pretty pathetic. I have nothing but complaints. I hope 8.1 fixes some of this crap.

This post was edited on 10/16/14 at 9:29 am