It really just goes back to the concept of "barriers to entry". If Apple can reproduce your software easily, they will. They might even do it better than you. They'll only go out of their way to buy you anymore when you've implemented something like Siri that's actually difficult, or something like Logic that has a massive and lucrative installed base. If you implement something trivial, don't be surprised when your competitors reimplement it instead of giving you a millions-dollar signing bonus just for your ideas.

> all bought under Steve's watch

It's on Steve's watch (a Navy term).

/pedantry

Good point. I guess the difference is those are apps they couldn't recreate themselves for cheaper than the purchase cost, whereas they used to buy trivial apps (MenuClock being a good example of that).

Coverflow was bought, too.

...which happened after Steve came back to Apple. Before that they bought software like MenuClock, the Hierarchical Apple Menu, WindowShade, Stickies, etc.

Sherlock was introduced after Jobs returned to Apple.