Apple do not have a Monopoly, unless you use a diseased meaning of the word Monopoly to mean devices produced by Apple. In that case, almost every company has a monopoly.

At a certain point, if you execute so much better than the competition and set yourself up differently (controlling and innovating in hardware too) and you maintain total control of your platform, you can dominate in the market to such an extent that you have a virtual monopoly.

Yes, but Apple do not have a monopoly in smartphones or computers. Maybe, just maybe you could say they have significant market dominance of mp3 player market, but who cares about that.

How is it so different? Microsoft at least did not control the hardware. Apple has always been worse than Microsoft in that respect - they even wanted to control the printer at one point! The only difference now is that for some reason its working for them now and iPhone is incredibly popular. But they're much more monopolistic than Microsoft ever was, and they always have been, and I would imagine they always will be.