Just an A record, you just need the domain query to resolve to your IP.

Yes, but it’ll likely still be faster, just not as dramatically. Half of 4-94x is still 2-47x faster.

Polish.

It useless to be first if that product isn’t reliable, sustainable, practical. Apple adds polish to other concepts to make them usable by the vast majority of people.

Laptops existed……with weird keyboard layouts and mice that were afterthoughts. PowerBook pioneered the keyboard forward design that every laptop now has.

Smartphones existed……incredibly limited, weird UI, awkward input, targeted at businesses instead of regular people. iPhone changed everything so much that every other design died.

Collecting different innovations and figuring how to combine them in a way that is practical and sellable is their continuous innovation.