You can't tell me this wasn't at least influenced by Apple

Influenced? This almost looks like a duplicate. I hate when companies say that they didn't try to copy another product, or that it wasn't influenced by it, when it clearly is.

I think that companies that are successful should be the companies that think of their own ideas and design their products based on what they think will be great, not what other companies have already done.

Yeah, it's more like the iPad than some may realize. It is even rumored to use the A8 Hummingbird, which is the processor developer by a company Apple bought in February and is the CPU within the A4 SoC used in the iPad. Just like the Galaxy S was strikingly similar to the iPhone 4 (component wise), I can imagine this being the same.

Samsung, being one of Apple's biggest and closest manufacturers for the components in the iOS devices, has the opportunity to know what Apple is working on months before the device is released.. giving it an advantage to catch up better than others.

They better be careful though, Apple is known for going after their closest friends if tensions arise. Samsung ran into a similar issue with the iPod and lost quite a bit of business from Apple.