You're right of course, it was a poor analogy for exactly the reason you cite. What I was probably thinking of was the somewhat related trope: "society is to blame" for the actions of a criminal. It may be that many criminals have shitty childhoods, but plenty of people who have shitty childhoods aren't criminals. The Mac team may not have invented the Mac from nothing, just as Intel didn't invent the transistor, but insofar as they did recycle old ideas, what they created was markedly better in many ways than what they received, and that's how we measure innovation (I think).