Apple is one of the few companies in the world that does both software and hardware in a competent and timely fashion. If Sony / HTC / Samsung had as much software roots as Apple I believe we would see Android handsets that actually offered credible alternatives rather than being showcases for their hardware and physical design departments. Then again I guess shipping Android phones amounts to admitting that you cant do the whole stack. I really commend HP for trying to be the other company that does the whole stack.