You hit on something, but didn't follow it through. Yes, other companies are doing the same business process that Apple is doing: Prototyping, testing, iterating. I would argue that other companies are also doing it at the scale that Apple does. Google's Street View and Book scanning projects have a huge scale
As you said, the difference is how Apple does it: out of the public eye. While all companies do internal dev and iterate a few times, it feel like Apple will keep something internal and iterate on something longer than others. The result is a product that feel more developed. It is often said that Microsoft needs 3 public releases to make some good (i.e. Windows 3.x was the first reasonable and "good" GUI). Apple hides those first 2 internally.
Go back and watch the iPhone launch video. Try and remember how crappy phones were in 2007. There are a lot of things the iPhone famously didn't have. However, the iPhone didn't feel like a 1.0 product. Clearly they had done a ton of work and iteration to make the features that did ship pretty well done and a great UX.
The first Samsung smart watches introduced last year were jokes with terrible compromises. Will they get better? Sure, But that happens in public.
As you said, the difference is how Apple does it: out of the public eye. While all companies do internal dev and iterate a few times, it feel like Apple will keep something internal and iterate on something longer than others. The result is a product that feel more developed. It is often said that Microsoft needs 3 public releases to make some good (i.e. Windows 3.x was the first reasonable and "good" GUI). Apple hides those first 2 internally.
Go back and watch the iPhone launch video. Try and remember how crappy phones were in 2007. There are a lot of things the iPhone famously didn't have. However, the iPhone didn't feel like a 1.0 product. Clearly they had done a ton of work and iteration to make the features that did ship pretty well done and a great UX.
The first Samsung smart watches introduced last year were jokes with terrible compromises. Will they get better? Sure, But that happens in public.