Steve Jobs acted like the GUI was his divine creation, that is why he sued MS over it. He claimed they "stole" what he had created, when in fact he stole the concept to begin with, leaving his complaints moot.
I think you are lacking important parts of the problem. Apple never claimed to have invented the concept of GUI. The problem was that Apple and Microsoft was engaging a deal for Microsoft to produce software for the Apple OS. So Apple have been providing Microsoft with early prototypes and even some source code to help the optimization of Word and MultiPlan (predates Excel). Windows Menu bar was almost identical to Apples, it even had a Special menu containing disk operations as well as other similar items elsewhere.
Microsoft however had licenced technology from Xerox and had begon the work on windows prior to the deal with apple. So they weren't breaching much beside the blatant rips mentioned.
The Macintosh in general, maybe you are too young to remember this, but there was a time that Apple was considered to be a legitamite threat to IBM's dominance. However, because of how controlling Jobs was, many software devs moved to Windows.
I'm too young to remember Apples infancy, but only because I was occupied with the Commodore range of products at that time, and business-computers weren't a toddlers choice of fun. I however gained a strong interest in computer history.
I think the problem Apple faced wasn't the control poised by Jobs that was the problem - But I'm curious to learn more about what the problem were back then. It was IBMs choice of building a computer out of shelf-ware with only the bios as the only legacy part. That opened up for clone makers like Compaq to reverse engineer one single part, and then build clones, as well as IBMs fault of not seeing the value of owning the OS, giving Microsoft a free pass to license to every clone maker out there.
OSX as a success? Depends on your definition of a "success". If you look at Apple from the beginning on down the line, you would not see OS x as a success. Apple could have been bigger than Microsoft, but their way of doing business rubs many of their partners the wrong way.
I define success in a product as something that allows the company to grow marked share. Yes, compared to the fact that Apple was 20 times or more the value of Microsoft at some point - OS X is no success. But if you look at the sales figures prior to OS X and the figures today, even in regards of a higher general sale of computers one can say OS X have been a success for Apple. As good as Apples OS were at some point in history compared to what else was out, OS X was a much needed step to ensure Apple could keep up with producing their own OS. Imagine, when Windows 2000 was out Apple still was messing around with an OS without memory protection or pre-emptive multitasking. Even the Amiga I bought ten years prior to that had pre-emptive multitasking (But by no stretch any memory protection. I strongly recall Guru meditation that poorly written software gave in the worst thinkable of situations)
Devs jumped onto the iPhone because of the masses flocking to it. Like I said, Steve Job's style works in the beginning. However, once something else that allows more freedom shows itself as a true competitor, devs begin to leave Apple for the other product. It has happened time and time again. I agree with you about webkit, though, I honestly forgot about that.
Well, we'll see how well Jobs new whip pans out. For the end user, it is all for the best (not to have farmville and related flash games directly ported to an native iphone app is for the greater good too) to have the software written in the languages and libs that provides the fastest and least battery consuming experience possible. But I understand devs that see this as something that either is too hard or make project leap out of the economically sustainable frames as say a flash to iphone app conversion would mean.
I'll be writing apps for Android outside of the company I work for, so I'll just have my own pride to whip my development onto the right track
But as an end user, I'll be muttering unpleasant language every time I try out an app that drains my battery digging through bloat created by cross-platform-tools that isn't well optimized for android, and probably wishing there actually was some quality control.