alt Hacker NewsActually, I think it's you who's out of touch here.
There's two awful colliding factors here.
1) People absolutely buy features.
I am in the Apple ecosystem, why? Because iMessage on my laptop, seamless copy/paste and the fact that it supports every bit of software I want to run.
2) MBA thinkers value features, for the previous reason. They can show that features move the needle of units sold. It's easier to quantify.
What you and I implicitly understand is that Apple has a captive audience, people will continue to buy MacOS (by virtue of Apple Hardware) for the coming few years at least.
The higher quality the software, the more performant and less buggy: the more likely we stay in the ecosystem longer. This will sell units in the 4-7 year timeframe for sure.
The more Apple focus on this, the larger their moat.
MBA's barely understand how to build a moat, other than monopolising a market by M&A.
> Because iMessage on my laptop, seamless copy/paste and the fact that it supports every bit of software I want to run.
This is a good example of a feature that is actually useful. But it is also one that has been around for a long time. Can you think of something more recent?