Apple literally lives on the "Cutting Edge" a-la XKCD [1]. My wife is an iPerson and she always tells me about these new features (my phone has had them since $today-5 years). But for her, these are brand new exciting things!
First Mover effect seems only relevant when goverment warrants are involved. Think radio licenses, medical patents, etc. Everywhere else, being a first mover doesnt seem to correlate like it should to success.
See social media, bitcoin, iOS App Store, blu-ray, Xbox live, and I’m sure more I can’t think of rn.
It's a huge, diverse ecosystem of players and that's probably why Android has always gotten the coolest stuff first. But it's also its achilles' heel in some ways.
There are plenty of Android/Windows things that Apple has had for $today-5 years that work the exact same way.
One side isn’t better than the other, it’s really just that they copy each other doing various things at a different pace or arrive at that point in different ways.
Some examples:
- Android is/was years behind on granular permissions, e.g. ability to grant limited photo library access to apps
- Android has no platform-wide equivalent to AirTags
- Hardware-backed key storage (Secure Enclave about 5 years ahead of StrongBox)
- system-wide screen recording
Google has been making their own phone hardware since 2010. And surely they can call up Qualcomm and Samsung if they want to.