The spinning machines were an actual technological improvement, whereas Uber (and many other valley companies) are just replacing old middlemen with new ones.
The mechanism of ordering and accepting a ride via a mobile application, as well as giving feedback both ways, is a new innovation (and the established taxi services seem very reluctant to adopt this kind of innovations.)
And the mechanism of putting items in a shopping cart is patented.
Yes, though that patent turned out to be indefensible about a year ago.