It’s more a statement of how they operate IMO. I’ve watched them be extremely conservative over the years to see which ideas stick and wait until hardware has matured.

My HTC thunderbolt was one of the first “4G” phones, but was barely useable more than a few hours.

Yes, Apple has made some insane design constraints in the past (butterfly keyboards, the whole thin-ness thing), but their chip choices are usually pretty sound and grounded in reality.

*edit: I wanted to throw in how frustrating the lack of push email was for so long (and still kind of is), but I get it. From their standpoint, they control APNS & can use that for energy efficiency benefits to make a grandma-friendly device