They went to homes and saw how "emotionally" attached people were to their iPhones that they made the engineers duplicate iOS.
Either that or they went to homes and brought back nothing the engineers could use, and forced them to find their ideas elsewhere, like by looking at iOS.
Obviously they are not identical, but why open source is always "inspired by" their closed source predecessors and is somehow able to deny it or justify denying it is intriguing.
This is how it appears to the public:
Linux = Windows rip-off.
Open Office = Office rip-off.
Android = iOS rip-off.
Their main differences is in the freedom of the developers which also happens to be inversely proportional to how much they get paid.
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
- Steve Jobs
Of course, he also is famously quoted as saying:
"Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
- Steve Jobs
Clearly Jobs knows a stolen idea when he sees one. Takes one to know one?
"Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- Albert Einstein
How they avoid admitting they were inspired by iOS boggles my mind. BECAUSE IT IS SO DAMN OBVIOUS.