I’m not one of the orthodox Apple or Android fans that rail endlessly about my platform’s originality and innovation and my opponent’s shameless copying. But enough Apple fans do it frequently enough to need to be reminded once and while that this kind of back-and-forth is common and typical of any competitive, healthy market (cars, TV sets, breakfast cereals). Apple copies Android or maybe Palm, Android copies Apple and Palm,Palm copies Android and Apple and so on. Consumers win.

So now, via Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac, comes the screenshot of Apple’s iOS 5 integration of speech to text functionality (one of the absolute shining gems of Android phones). Cute microphone icon on the keyboard. Remind you of anything?

(Sorry to potential commenters who want to argue that putting a microphone icon next to the space bar to trigger speech-to-text, just like Android, isn’t copying. That’s not really open for argument. And, as I mentioned above, the post is not meant as a criticism of Apple but of Apple fans who don’t understand the way competitive markets work.)