Spotify was certainly well-executed. But I don't see how that claim leads to saying that anyone else doing a music subscription service is copying Spotify. You're conflating "doing something well" with "inventing something".

In addition, Apple Music is not just a clone of Spotify. Besides the integration I talked about before, there's also the focus on human curation along with Beats 1. AIUI Spotify relies on algorithms to put together playlists (I'm not a Spotify customer). Apple took the core concept, of a music subscription service, and produced their own unique take on it. Even if you think making a music subscription service is copying (and I stand by my claim that it's an obvious evolution of the music store concept), you have to admit that this falls in the "great artists steal" side of things.

> Multitasking / Task Switcher – Copied from WebOS

Apple's task switcher looks like CoverFlow, which is something they invented many years ago. Unless you're arguing that WebOS owns the concept of seeing the apps that you can switch to, but I don't buy that (besides the fact that seeing the apps you're switching to is a reasonably obvious thing to do once you have the computing resources for it, didn't Windows Vista introduce basically this exact same thing many years ago?).

> Calendar – Copied from Sunrise

I literally can't understand what the description for this one is trying to describe.

> iTunes Radio

iTunes has had radio support since forever, so I don't understand this claim.

> Back Navigation – Copied from BlackBerry OS 10

I've never used a BlackBerry, but after some searching around, it appears that BlackBerry's horizontal swipe gesture is not a back navigation gesture, so this claim is bogus.

> Notification Center / Toggles – Copied from Android, Samsung TouchWhiz

My recollection is that notification / control center was actually based on stuff people were doing with jailbreak.

> Lock Screen – Copied form Android, WP8

Haha what, are you serious? iPhone invented the slide-to-unlock (Apple even had a patent on it!), it's the other OS's that copied Apple here.

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> Then you can add phablets, mini-tablets, big screen phones. Apple for years attacked these devices.

What does that have to do with this conversation? Apple's pretty famous for saying they'll never do something right up until they do it. Remember the iPod Video?

But the point is, customer preferences changed over time. It used to be that everybody loved small devices (and many people still do). If Apple had introduced a 5.5" device back in, say, 2008, it would have been a humongous flop. So I don't understand what you're trying to say here, beyond acknowledging the fact that Apple recognized that customer demand for larger devices increased to the point where it made sense for Apple to expand their product line to meet that demand.

> Or how about multi-tasking windows? They criticized that, and then copied Windows Mobile's split-screen snapping identically for the iPad Pro

I am not very familiar with Windows Mobile (or even aware that it had split-screen snapping) so I can't comment here, except to question your "they criticized that" comment. When did Apple publicly comment about split-screen multitasking prior to adding support for it?

> Does it worse, costs more, and the majority of users aren't aware, and don't care.

Apple Photos is free.

As for "don't care", this is nonsense. Not only are you underestimating the number of people who go with Apple because they know Apple respects their privacy, you're also implying "it's ok to violate user privacy as long as they don't know you're doing it", which is a pretty shocking attitude.

> Right, everyone else's idea is either obvious

Oh give me a break. It's not my fault if you're picking obvious ideas to try and argue are unique. Or are you really going to try and argue that classifying and searching images isn't something people have wanted to do for decades?

Besides, most core ideas are obvious, and it's the details and execution that matters.

> And it wasn't until Google shipped it at scale and got industry applause for making photo management dramatically easier and hassle free, that suddenly they had to fast follow.

You really don't think Apple was looking into doing image classification and searching before Google released theirs? Just because Apple doesn't talk about upcoming plans doesn't mean they weren't already working on this. I'm very skeptical that this was a "fast follow" to copy Google, especially because Apple Photos gained this capability at the same time that the entire OS was upgraded with machine learning in all sorts of places. This is most assuredly just a case of it became feasible to do, so both Google and Apple did it at the same time.

> This is the problem with arguing with Apple loyalists. The constant hagiography.

This is the problem with arguing with Apple haters. Their insistence on retreating into accusing Apple users of cult-like or religious behavior to avoid having to actually construct good arguments.

> But it seems arguing with Apple fanboys is like arguing with a political pundit on a Cable news network. Their goal is to defend the image of their target no matter what.

Insulting the people you're arguing with is a terrible idea. Accusing people of being fanboys because they disagree with you is incredibly close-minded and offensive, and demonstrates that you're not arguing in good faith.

> Apple copies stuff.

Uh, yes, they copy things and make them better. That's was the foundation of this entire thread. You even quoted Steve Jobs saying "good artists copy, great artists steal". The argument here is that you're accusing them of "blindly copy[ing]", as well as implying that the companies they've "copied" are the sole inventors of the concept without any recognition that most of these core ideas have been around for a long time. Apple is literally famous for taking things that other companies have demonstrated the viability of and doing it better.

If you really want to accuse Apple of blindly copying, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Watson/Sherlock. That's by far the most famous case of Apple directly cloning someone else (and is notable in part because this isn't a case where Apple improved on the original, they merely copied it).