'Built To Be Flexible'

I read each post by Gruber (and he writes a lot), but I can't help but feel like the guy is stuck in some world where Apple is still fighting "the man" and trying to free us, and yet in reality Apple has become the man. I don't mean to speak negatively against Gruber because he is a great blogger, but the reality distortion field hits that man hard.

To discuss this particular story, the idea that Android just steals from the best competitor - that's probably true. I don't see why that is a negative though. Imagine if only Xerox had mice, or only Opera had tabs. Companies should be stealing the best ideas from their competitors, and then coming up with new ideas to one-up them. Apple isn't afraid of this, they stole plenty of ideas in iOS5, and they executed them well. Notifications from Android, lock screen from the jailbreak community (specifically LockInfo), and iMessage from Blackberry. I don't think there's anything wrong with this idea-copying, it makes the product better and that's good for consumers.