Firewire was Apple's competition to USB, but Apple did work on USB a bit.
Apple seems to start somethings, dump them, then let others pick them up and make them super good. USB for example is now mostly worked on by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, NEC, and Philips.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB
They do have some revolutionary things, just they have a lot of overpriced stuff that gets in the way/overshadows of the revolutionary stuff IMO.