Good catch Sanjy.
It’s very hard to develop new product versus buying it. Apple isn’t alone. Logitech bought Harmony. Adobe has only developed Illustrator and Acrobat, everything else was acquired.
If you look back at Jobs’ first Mac conference address after returning to Apple, it’s pretty obvious (in hindsight) that this was his strategy. Apple focus on hardware and OS and let the developers add the value. The thing that Apple did was make it so easy to market and distribute software. It’s part of their plan that really doesn’t get the credit that it deserves.
This system allows Apple to see what people use and bring it in house (iTunes, Siri). That’s called planning…