The difference that we have all been implicitly counting to make our wait less long on is in the uniqueness of POET's intellectual property, assuming that we havent been lied to all along (with U.S. Patent office complicity). If the monolithic process Dr. Taylor developed really works, we should be blessed with multiple $billions in market cap rather quickly, because no one else has this process.

Apple took so long because Microsoft had won the game (up till then) by being set up to profit from the licensing model that IBM allowed for personal computers. Apple wanted to control the hardware and software, so their closed system only paid off when it was finally embodied in a device (and then a service) that everyone wanted - the iPod and the iTunes store.