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I take your point for sure, but, that's not really what we're comparing against, is it? The comparison is more like google drive, or whatever MS's version of t

I take your point for sure, but, that's not really what we're comparing against, is it? The comparison is more like google drive, or whatever MS's version of that is now. At that point the distinction seems relatively minor to me.

jodrellblank 5y ago
Well, it depends what you meant when you said "why they continue to be so successful.". If you compare iOS to Android, Android outsells it by vast numbers. If you compare macOS to Windows, Windows outsells it by vast numbers. How do they hold a niche by making nice products? Well they make nice high-end luxurious feeling products and that's surely enough. If you take it more like "why do so many devs use macOS when they could have open source fully customisable Linux/BSD" which is in some ways their real "surprising" success given that they are more expensive and less customisable, the answer falls out in every HN thread about Apple - they build things which let people get on with their work. People get fed up of fighting suspend mode or wifi config or high-DPI displays or sound drivers or web video or breaking upgrades or regularly needing to edit config files to keep things basically working, and Apple makes all that go away. And that increasingly applies to Microsoft/Windows, people on HN often say things like "Win 10 ads in the start menu and telemetry is the last straw, I bought a Mac" or "I'm fed up of Windows update reboots interrupting me, I bought an M1 laptop", but they don't say nearly as much "I use macOS for the consistency of UI aesthetic". [Although people do say things like that about choosing iOS instead of Android] Syncthing would compare to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, but it's the ecosystem and developer attitude towards users that I'm pointing to, not the file sync part. Apple walk the fine line between taking options away vs forcing you to deal with plumbing, easily well enough to keep their niche market share. "I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about." - including plenty of tech users who don't care.

jodrellblank 5y ago

Well, it depends what you meant when you said "why they continue to be so successful.". If you compare iOS to Android, Android outsells it by vast numbers. If you compare macOS to Windows, Windows outsells it by vast numbers. How do they hold a niche by making nice products? Well they make nice high-end luxurious feeling products and that's surely enough. If you take it more like "why do so many devs use macOS when they could have open source fully customisable Linux/BSD" which is in some ways their real "surprising" success given that they are more expensive and less customisable, the answer falls out in every HN thread about Apple - they build things which let people get on with their work. People get fed up of fighting suspend mode or wifi config or high-DPI displays or sound drivers or web video or breaking upgrades or regularly needing to edit config files to keep things basically working, and Apple makes all that go away. And that increasingly applies to Microsoft/Windows, people on HN often say things like "Win 10 ads in the start menu and telemetry is the last straw, I bought a Mac" or "I'm fed up of Windows update reboots interrupting me, I bought an M1 laptop", but they don't say nearly as much "I use macOS for the consistency of UI aesthetic". [Although people do say things like that about choosing iOS instead of Android] Syncthing would compare to Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, but it's the ecosystem and developer attitude towards users that I'm pointing to, not the file sync part. Apple walk the fine line between taking options away vs forcing you to deal with plumbing, easily well enough to keep their niche market share. "I actively dislike a lot of the way they dumb down interfaces, but I acknowledge that's something the vast majority of users won't ever care about." - including plenty of tech users who don't care.