One of the interesting things about watching Apple’s rollout of the iPad and anticipating the rollout of its stunning generation 4 iPhone is that competitors don’t seem to get what makes Apple successful. As a result, they have generally failed miserably to bring forward offerings that have done as well. I spent a lot of my life as a competitive analyst and still do some work along those lines today, so this week I’ll offer some suggestions about how a firm might beat Apple.