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Comment by yabatopia | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if most people really consider the OS to be that important anymore, as the author strongly believes. The Windows Surface Laptop is no threat to Apple because it doesn't run macOS. Samsung's smartphones are no threat to Apple because the phones don't run iOS.

Then he continues with the WeChat factor to explain the shrinking market share of Apple in China. If you consider China the trendsetter in tech, that doesn't bode well for Apple in the rest of the world. It's a clear example that an OS isn't that important anymore.

If, or better when, a platform similar to WeChat emerges in Europe or the US, Apple can't rely anymore on it's OS to sell high margin hardware like the iPhone or Mac. It's not just a China problem.

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By the argument of your first paragraph, Android and iOS are no threat to Windows because they don't run Windows apps.

But of course they are, just as Samsung is a threat to Apple, Apple is a threat to Samsung, etc. We are doing a set of tasks and using features and functions that multiple options provide a solution for.

Platform tie-in was once a strong bond, but has dramatically weakened. Those people who chose teams in the nascent days might be somewhat locked in, but anyone picking a platform over the past half decade has almost always created a transferable world.

As a case in point, my wife recently went from a Nexus 5 to an iPhone. Virtually nothing in her life changed: She still had gmail and the KFC app and Facebook and Hangouts and a good, standards compliant web browser and SMS, etc. For a variety of reasons she decided she didn't like idioms of the OS so she moved to a Galaxy S8, and again her world was close to identical.

I agree with this. Aside from simple inertia, switching phone platforms (at least between iOS and Android) these days is pretty painless -- after the first time that is. When I got my first Android it hurt a lot because iMessage. After convincing a bunch of family that it would be fine to get a Hangouts account, I can switch back and forth pretty comfortably now. Apps are basically equivalent. I'm back on iPhone right now because I tired of not getting updates and I no longer trust Google is living up to the "don't be evil" ideal.

It's all about platforms. In most of the world, the OS is the platform; it determines which apps are available and what the UI looks like. In China, apparently WeChat is the platform and the OS becomes irrelevant.

The closest analogy for the rest of the world is the web browser. Chromebooks are only possible because enough functionality is available through the browser without any direct access to the OS whatsoever.

"The Windows Surface Laptop is no threat to Apple because it doesn't run macOS. "

Author didn't say that, he said MacOS was a unique product which made it a monopoly, it doesn't guarantee success or losing sales to semi-comparable substitutes. But let's look at it's current state.

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/11/q1-2017-worldwide-mac-s...

6.8% doesn't sound like a lot, but remember the Mac got as low as 2% twenty years ago. And Macs sell for an average of $1,200 while Windows PC average sales price is around $500. So Apple has about 16% of PC revenues (and the majority of PC profits).

Apple is selling over $25B a year of Macs and growing revenues in an industry declining at 10% a year, Surface sales peaked at $3.5B and are now falling. Evidence is that Surface sales aren't a big threat to Apple because even an identical form factor isn't going to sway customers who want MacOS.

Isn't the point that weechat has pretty much become the preferred operating system in China?

WeChat is an application, not an Operating System.

The point it is that is so widely used in China that the OS it runs on is basically indifferent to the user, since he will spend most of his time in the app itself, which replaces/supplement/embeds many services that the OS (or other third party apps) usually provides.

How does that get through Apple's restrictions?

Consider what are the consequences of not having WeChat on iOS. In a sense, Apple is held hostage.

What restrictions are you talking about? Apple has no prohibitions against making the vast majority of applications.

I think you've put your finger on the strongest implication from his piece. Platform has always mattered. What does Apple do if software application out of their control becomes the only platform that matters?

Fair point.

As long as your most used apps area available on more platforms, and those are more or less equal in terms of features/performance/usability, on which platform they run it shouldn't make a big difference.

The author says "WeChat it's not Whatsapp/Facebook/Twitter", but even in there is not such a centralized service outside of China, most of the same uses are covered by ubiquitous apps.

Are you kidding? It's like every other day we hear about a new Android exploit or security flaw. At least Apple is committed to strong encryption and privacy. The OS - and the hardware integration - is an enormous selling point to me. As much as I oppose Apple's direction as of late for many business decisions (iPhone 7 headphone jack for example), the reasons stated above are why I still cannot see myself switching.

Android enables you to install apps from 3rd party stores and specifically warns people about being careful about doing this. It is not so much that Android has more exploits, but that it is more exploitable if you choose it to be.

It's like every other day we hear about a new Android exploit or security flaw

Aside from the absurd exaggeration, you're vulnerable to clickbait journalism. Extraordinarily few of those "exploits or security flaw"s had any material impact on the market at all, seldom having a practical or real world exploit. Instead it's a theoretical by some security group looking for some free press.

They're a couple of good platforms. Rhetoric online isn't useful.

The OS and hardware integration is a selling point. But how many people actually care about security flaws?

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