Apple certainly does well in investing in R&amp;D and looking towards some amount of pivoting.<p>However, this quasi-exponential growth in spending reminds me of a pathetic moment at a EU commission meeting I attended, on research and innovation public funds in 2010.<p>The EU commissioner basically complained that Europe had no Unicorns like the GAFAs, but wanted to be reassuring: this is about to change. We will prevail, <i>because</i> we&#x27;ll spend more on R&amp;D (through tax money) than all of these do together.<p>With the implicit assumption that the more you spend, the bigger the returns.