But responding to your explanation, if competitors are free to "adopt" Apple's innovations, why can't competitor's "adopt" OS X and iPhone by copying them feature for feature, polish for polish, detail for detail, simply changing logos and writing "Hello from Dreary Seattle" on the back?

It is not obvious to me how "polish and attention to detail" are going to be a competitive advantage in a world where competitors have the unrestricted right to adopt Apple's innovations.

I suggest that part of why Apple is able to differentiate with polish and attention to detail is our existing barriers to adopting other people's innovations.

They can't copy the code for OS X because it's covered by copyright. They also can't make it look exactly the same because of trademark. What does that leave? A competitor could then still completely implement their own operating system, User Interface, related hardware, and put the effort into polish and attention to detail. And somehow that's a problem that requires legal recourse to prevent?