Well they definitely commercialised it. Before the Lisa, no one thought consumers would be interested in a GUI computer. Bringing it to market is an important part of disrupting industries.

The iPhone was similar where the tech just existed out there (touch screen smart phones were definitely a thing), but it was Apple’s specific implementation that helped in the disruption. After both the Lisa and the iPhone launched, you can see computers and mobile phones coalescing around Apple’s vision in the long-run.

And yet it shows, yet again, the same about companies (and management). Steve Jobs was lucky, right time, right idea, right people, massive interest in the right things in the market, right location, right hardware available, right access to market and stores, production capacity available (for reasons entirely unrelated to what Apple did) ...

Yes they worked, but they rolled a hard 6 not once, but 20 times.

In other words: what about Apple makes them able to repeat this in another market? Nothing. Not even Steve Jobs (and yes I know he's ... which is yet another reason ...)

Jobs-era Apple had its share of failures too, we just ignore them because the successes were so successful.

Yeah, no phonemaker was using the capacitive multi-touch display...