I close analogy that more HN readers would understand from the linked article would be imagine a pile of tablets connected to a wifi network, and they want to v

I close analogy that more HN readers would understand from the linked article would be imagine a pile of tablets connected to a wifi network, and they want to video conference. Every tablet implements the wifi standards such that they connect quite successfully to the AP at great speeds and range. However, one mfgr, for the sake of argument, Apple, stuck a MAC address software firewall in their OS 'to ensure a consistent user experience' such that its tablets at the MAC address layer can only communicate with other Apple MAC addressed products. Older HN readers will recall a vast variety of floppy disk using 80s home computers such that a CP/M Z80 box, a IBM AT 80286, an apple II, a TRS-80 model 4, and a commodore 64, all technically use standards compliant 5 1/4 floppy disks such that any double sided double density disk will work in any drive of all those devices... I assure you the filesystem layer is utterly incompatible and at best you'll need very special utilities. Somewhat younger HN readers might recall "stupid flash drive tricks" under linux like formatting a USB attached flash drive as ext2 format simply to see if you can do it. And it does work, perfectly. And nothing other than a linux box could mount a ext2 formatted USB flash drive. Technically thats a standards compliant flash drive both at physical interface and firmware layer that will not work on a mac or windows box. There's essentially an implementation bug in the standards documents for zigbee such that the RF layer will interop but the application layer most certainly does not have to interop and often enough does not, whereas zwave does NOT have the standards document implementation bug and any rando zwave device will mostly pretty much work with any other rando zwave device. The only technology I'm aware of where 100% of devices will interop is SCADA current loops. Some techs come close like DMX or zwave which never seems to fail. Some semi silo'd tech like insteon is pretty interoperable. Some stuff like zigbee essentially doesn't work IRL unless the mfgr put effort into it, which some do... and some don't.