One of the Android engineers (back when Android was going to be a Blackberry knockoff) made a similar comment about his reaction to the iPhone unveiling.

>“As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’”

What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d...

That's because Apple had a touchscreen, and Google had a keyboard at the time.

Lots of phones had touchscreens before. It was a combination of the physical design, engineering, UI and feature set that was so ground breaking. The thing is each of these things is intimately connected and depend on each other. You can’t just do one without the other three and have anything worthwhile. That’s why this was so hard.

It’s why analysts that just focuses on one obvious feature - a touch screen - misses the point so badly. If a touch screen was all that mattered, why didn’t the Android team copy one of the previous touch screen phones instead?

ala a blackberry knockoff

Well, no one is accusing Google of originality.

Also known as the egg of Columbus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus