Apple has the talent to make existing ideas happen, to nurture them, and change them forever.

It’s fascinating to watch Apple following the same pattern over and over again.

This pattern started a long time ago, in 1984, when Apple introduced the Macintosh. The Macintosh had a graphical user interface and a mouse. That technology already existed before the Mac, but only Apple managed to make it mainstream.

It happened again with the iPod in 2001. Sony had designed a 1.8” drive that nobody knew what to do with it. Although MP3 players existed long before the iPod, only Apple managed to make the category ubiquitous. In the process, they also revolutionised the music industry through the iTunes Store. And then they created an ecosystem with cases, cables, speakers, headphones and other accessories.

Smartphones existed way before the iPhone, with mixed results of course. The category needed Apple to change forever. And then the tablet market, enough said.

Apple has the talent to make existing ideas happen, to nurture them, and change them forever.

The same thing is going to happen with NFC. This technology has been on Android phones for many years. Yet, its only apparent use has been to exchange files. How revolutionary.

When two weeks ago Apple introduced the iPhone 6 with NFC, they put all their weight behind it. This weight is called , which is going to change the way we pay for goods forever.

It takes lots of thinking to get from an off-the-shelf component to Apple Pay.

This is what Apple is good at. They take an existing technology, integrate it with their own technology, and build an ecosystem around it. It takes lots of thinking to get from an off-the-shelf component to Apple Pay.