No, they didn't, but they tied it to something unique: human breathing at a resting pace. They anthropomorphised it.
Ok, that's done, Apple took it. What's next? What's even more intuitive or revolutionary?
We'll never know if major companies with insanely great designers constantly regurgitate what Apple did years before.
I don't think its unreasonable to hold companies other than Apple to the same design standards. Certainly most large consumer electronics companies have similar resources (human, industrial, capital, etc.) to use.
Other companies prioritize features over usability. Apple does not create as feature rich programs, focusing instead on making them simple, easy to use, and aesthetically pleasing. Google, Microsoft, Linux devs, etc. build more feature-packed, customizable products. It is difficult to make software both feature rich and yet uncomplicated and easy to approach. I like the Firefox way of doing things: put commonly needed preferences in menubar->preferences and hide everything else away in a strange place like about:config that the user can find if they need.
Personally, I am satisfied with Android 2.2's, Ubuntu's, and even Windows 7's UIs and prefer the richer sets of features (not that I dislike iOS or Apple products; I actually use them at work on a daily basis). I think there are benefits to doing software both ways and I think the range of program complexity and power in the consumer software market reflects that.
I made the distinction between features and usability deliberately. In the context of my comment, a feature could be defined as "something the program can do," rather than "something the marketers will list as a feature," so in that context, easy and simple to use is certainly _not_ a feature. Like I said, there is a market for all levels of complexity and flexibility in software stemming from varying preferences and needs.
