I hesitated to reply because this is such a subjective issue. I look at the software on the Android and Windows side and just don't see much of interest to me.

I hesitated to reply because this is such a subjective issue. I look at the software on the Android and Windows side and just don't see much of interest to me. That's just me though. I think one area that Apple clearly does excel at though is software features that take advantage of specific hardware features. The fact they design the whole product in sync on both the hardware and software side, without either taking priority by itself is truly unique in the industry. So for example the way the M1 has instructions that accelerate particular operations common on the OSX/iOS software stack, or the computational photography software that works hand in glove with the neural engine hardware. The fact that apple develops their own developer tools, OS, application software, hardware and even CPUs now is unique in the industry and deep software skills are a really important differentiator. Maybe that side is slipping, but if so that will be a big problem for them down the line.