I'm not sidestepping it. My point was of mass market adoption and innovation.

I remember testing the original iMac at a computer trade fair back in it's day, and I was not impressed at all. For me it was a cheap looking plastic computer that didn't have a floppy drive (but hey they sold you one) and _forced_ you into an integrated monitor.

Your opinion doesn’t change the fact that USB was niche before Apple went all in on USB. When people give praise to Apple for making something mainstream that’s all they mean. Apple has a tendency to set trends and be rewarded for that.

Check my other comment for data and arguments. USB was already pretty much standard in new PCs and all kind of peripherals were available many months before iMac release. By the time the iMac was released the yearly computer sales were in the 90 million range >90% PCs, easily were 10s of millions of PCs USB equipped by Aug-1998. I find it hard to justify that a computer that sold 5 million units over 3 years made USB mainstream.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2001/04/19Apple-Ships-5-Milli...

Edit typo.

There were no/barely any working PC devices because the hardware is only half the battle the rest is software.

Windows 95 OSR2 got official USB support in Aug97.

Was that 1.1. I feel like USB didn’t count until version 1.1.