there are likely some genuine innovations by Apple, with as many resources and dollars poured into it

I'll believe it when I see it. But the Apple business model always seemed to be five years behind the curve delivered with polish for a retail market.

much of it seems to be due to acquiring companies that have genuinely interesting technology, e.g. P.A. Semi, Imagination Technologies, etc.

Right. They mastered maximizing they're market cap, which gives them cheap financing to monopolize other people's innovations.

But what they advertise as revolutionary tends to simply be shiny.

anti-marketing usually through the news of non-US products (e.g. Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, etc.)

The real innovation is convincing people bleeding edge hardware and phenomenal engineering is cheapo crap.