People love to parrot this, yet if you think for a second this isnt true at all in all the many ways.

1. Siri - not the first assistant, absolute garbage.

2. Apple Maps (original) - utter garbage at launch, slightly better today in US.

3. Vision Pro - Not the first VR headset. Massive failure.

If anything, Apple has been tremendously successful few times when they were not first (phones, tablets, silicon ..) but they have also been tremendously faltered when they were not first.