Of course this is not exactly a new situation for Apple. And the fact that 9 out of ten good ideas in the Windows interface is directly ripped off from the Apple OS is not exactly a secret. In other words, Apple is generally an Idea Source for others. Each writer was given an object, chosen at random, and told to develop a story idea based on that object. The story could be anything and did not have to contain the object in itself, as long as the genesis was the object chosen.
Ideas are everywhere.
I will even be so bold as to suggest that it is more difficult to rip off ideas than to make them yourself. Simply because they are not your own ideas, so you naturally do not understand them as well as you would your own. Which of course explains why derivative works are always less interesting and powerful than original ideas. They usually don't know. This is because you are asking them to look outside themselves for the source of ideas, and the source of ideas is themselves.