I'm sorry, but you'll need to back up that claim with some sources. It absolutely does not stand on its own.
The only example I can think of would be the Macbook Air and how it has inspired the rest of the industry to make more lightweight laptops.
Apart from that, I cannot see a single thing Apple has done which the industry has followed on, mostly hardware-vise, for their PCs, Apple has done almost zero innovation. There would be nothing to follow.
Switching to all USB was a natural consequence of all new gadgets and equipment coming with a USB connector, not a innovation by Apple.
And ditching the floppy was actually something you could not do on a Windows-machine until quite recently. I'm not sure if you are aware of this or not, but until Windows Vista, if you wanted to install Windows on a machine which had IO controllers or other hardware it did not recognize required to complete the install, you would need to provide Windows setup with drivers. And until Windows Vista those drivers could only be provided by a floppy. For real. I know it sounds like madness, but those were the breaks. PC vendors had to deal with that.
So basically until Vista, having a floppy-drive was a defacto requirement for a Windows-machine. And people didn't like Vista, so until Windows 7 you sort of had to play by those rules as well.
As for laptops, I find it hard to give Apple credit for innovating when all they did was the same as everyone else, make things smaller and lighter, only taking it a bit further.
So... None of your points have any substance to them what so ever. But you said those were the easy ones. In fact they were so easy that they completely missed.
With that out of the way, please feed my interest. Give me the real juice, the uneasy ones, if you like. Tell me how Apple in any way has done anything which can be considered innovative in the desktop space, which "the rest of the industry will copy"?
USB prior to the iMac was moribund. Very few devices, half the motherboards didn't ship with drivers for the ports. While everybody was talking about how great USB was and how it would replace all the other ports, none of the PC manufacturers took it seriously until Apple shipped the iMac.
Same could be said with Bluetooth. Lot's of talk about how great it was/would be, but none of the PC manufacturers really did anything with it until Apple started to ship it standard on their devices and make a fuss about it.
Ditto with WiFi. I believe that the original iBook was the first mainstream computer designed and sold with integrated wireless networking. I don't recall any PC manufacturers chomping at the bit to make it standard across the range on their models.
"As for laptops, I find it hard to give Apple credit for innovating when all they did was the same as everyone else, make things smaller and lighter, only taking it a bit further.'
Taking it "a bit further" by innovating in manufacturing processes. Please point me to PC laptops that were constructed from a single block of aluminium prior to the late 2008 Macbook Pro.
Given that you seem to claim that there is so much rampant innovation in the PC market, please point it out.
So you are saying that USB in general wasn't taking of until around the the time of the iMac. That does not make it the iMac which drove this development.
Bluetooth, at least in my opinion, has severely limited use. Most my devices has it, has had it (apart from desktops) and on all of them I turn it off. It is a relic from ancient times.
Ditto with wifi? Seriously? No really? You are going to pick widely available products and just claim that some iProduct popularized it?
You're obviously seeing the world through Apple-coloured glasses and are unable to see general technological progress as just that.
And like I said in the original post: lets ignore laptops, because those are not what we are discussing. Someone wanted to know what Apple would do with desktop system since evidently the entire PC industry will copy that in 2-3 years.
I'm still waiting for a single example from you which holds valid. None have been provided so far. Only fanboy-cheering.
As for the PC business in general and all that innovation you claim that I say is happening there... My point is that there isn't. It's a very standstill market. There has been little to no innovation the last decade, except making things cheaper, more efficient, smaller, lighter and prettier.
You know... The general trends for all things technology. It's just evolving. And here you credit all that general evolving to one company without any proof what so ever.
The only example I can think of would be the Macbook Air and how it has inspired the rest of the industry to make more lightweight laptops.
Apart from that, I cannot see a single thing Apple has done which the industry has followed on, mostly hardware-vise, for their PCs, Apple has done almost zero innovation. There would be nothing to follow.