CES, start your photocopiers: Hey, it’s cool to copy Apple again!

In the world of sports, sometimes it’s easier to make an impression without playing. When you’re in the game, all your actions are judged and all your mistakes happen under close scrutiny. But leave some other poor fellow alone who is now being taken apart for their mistakes, you will find that all is forgiven… or better yet, forgotten. “Let’s get David Price back in the game,” they’ll say. I’m sure we were wrong when we said he was physically incompetent and afraid of the ball.

I often wonder if some version of this thinking is why Apple neglects trade shows and conferences, even though it has the resources to attend any event on the planet if it wants to. Many new technology products for example, debuted at CES in Las Vegas this month, but there were none from the industry’s most famous brand at all. And yet, in their absence, Apple products still received some of the most positive reviews.

Take poor old Dell, which announced at CES major rebranding for their PC lines. Instead of XPS, Inspiron, and Latitude, the company’s machines will be called Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max—terms familiar to buyers because they’re inspired by, well, the iPhone. Result? Mockery for Dell and a bunch of headlines that promote Apple products and make the Cupertino company look like a trendsetter.

I rather feel for Dell, who clearly got it wrong and don’t seem to know how to fix it. Apple has a tendency to do very complex things and make them look easy and simple. When competitors follow suit, they trip over their own shoelaces, in this case adding needlessly complicating sub-brands like Plus and Premium. In any case, simplicity is not about the choice of words, but about the fundamental structure of your product portfolio. (By the way, Apple doesn’t always get these things right or. But, of course, her mistakes are forgotten when someone else takes center stage.)

Meanwhile, Nvidia was impersonating Apple elsewhere in Las Vegas: the Project Digits supercomputer barely hit the CES floor, as it came to be known. Mac mini cloneand not without good reason. It’s much more powerful (and therefore much more expensive) than the Mac mini, but the handheld design is very familiar, as is the emphasis on artificial intelligence. And it would be hard to imagine that the words “Like the Mac mini, except…” weren’t uttered at some point in its development cycle.

Even some of the more positive headlines have been overshadowed for Apple’s rivals by insulting comparisons to the absentee giant. Asus almost got it right with the Zenbook A14, but was humiliated to see it was nothing more than “MacBook Air Competitor”. The company essentially played along with the comparison by joking that it was considering the name Zenbook Air. But I always refer to this strategy, which in films and TV series is called shadelike deception. Joking that your design is unoriginal doesn’t change the fact that it is.

Whether they’re willing to admit it or not, Apple’s competitors spent much of CES 2025 trying to copy its moves. Instead of using their absence from the show as an opportunity to introduce something different, they presented the same thing – only with PC chips, worse software and disastrous branding. And Apple got a bunch of uncritical PR without doing anything.

It’s often said that Apple doesn’t create innovation out of thin air. Rather, it bides its time and allows other companies to create a market before pouncing on it at the decisive moment and capturing the profits. I would agree that it is rare for a company to be first to market. But often he creates the first iconic a product in a market that defines what that market is in the popular mind – and, too often, in the minds of its competitors. After the launch of the iPhone or MacBook Air, competitors struggle to imagine an alternative that doesn’t start with Apple’s offering and then build on it.

The irony is that if companies really wanted to be like Apple, the best thing to do would be to not show up at CES at all. But when a star player is missing, it’s simply too tempting to rush out onto the field and do whatever it takes to impress the fans.