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Comment by BeefySwain | Hacker News Reader

What does "x-platform" mean in this context?

Cross-platform. There are 3 major desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, and Mac) and 2 major mobile operating systems (iPhone and Android). Every single OS has a huge marketshare worldwide (including Linux, if you count servers).

A truly x-platform app is one that works well on all 5 of these platforms, e.g. Signal. A moderately x-platform app is one that works well on the two mobile operating systems and on web as an alternative to desktop, e.g. WhatsApp. A single-platform app, like Apple FindMy, only works properly on e.g. Mac + iPhone. Apple tends to be the only major industry player that produces these sorts of apps, e.g. iMessage, FaceTime, Final Cut Pro, Keynote. Although with Keynote you can often get by with the iCloud web version, which has a useful 80%-or-so of the desktop app's features. Even apps like Meet, Zoom, and Teams -- run by rival companies -- are more x-platform than major Apple apps.

I think the GP knows what cross-platform means, but is confused by using "X" as shorthand for "cross". In my opinion, it's not widespread enough for the four-letter saving to be worth the confusion.

That's a good point, well taken. Especially now that "X" is the name of a social media platform :-)

Long before the richest man on earth bought Twitter to be his personal megaphone to help him prepare to become president in order to boost all his personal endeavors, the letter X has been used as a sort of contraction to replace common morphemes like "cross", "trans" etc, in places where the physical representation "x" likens to a cross or crossing of some sort, or in reference to the Greek letter Chi. Must we change our use of language to support this guy, too?

Xtian Xmas xfer tx/rx xor...

You pretty much listed all the examples where that’s done (x-ing is also a big one, on signs), but there are way more cases where no one would ever use the letter X like that. I think parsing that kind of “syntax sugar” takes more cycles than a lot of people care to spare just to understand what a stranger is saying online. It’s too loose to be commonly applicable. Things like “Xmas” are accepted on a case by case basis.

The argument wasn’t made out of principle, either. If it were more widespread, it would be worth the potential confusion. It’s just not. I agree with that.

I don't think "xor" belongs to that list, given that the "x" in it is a shortening of "eXclusive".

You need to be a natural-born citizen to become US president. Musk was born in South Africa.

I didn't directly interpret it a cross-platform but more as (x) platform... Asin variable x which is not Apple... Which is semantically the same I guess but not entirely.

Just to add to the different ways that that exact grouping of letters can be interpreted.

Maybe because I see an API as being able to be accessed from anywhere, so you could query it from a home automation device to trigger something when you are withing X meters of your house, which even if Apple truly released a cross-platform version of Find My that wouldn't be possible.

Linux is not a “major desktop operating system”. Let’s be intellectually honest here, particularly because you’re using the number “3” to bolster your argument that Apple is being negligent or unfair or whatever. Be annoyed at Apple for not ‘supporting Android’ or whatever all you want, but let’s not pretend that Apple isn’t paying a very justifiable amount of attention to desktop Linux. What next, iCloud.com doesn’t load properly in Lynx?

Estimates from earlier this year are over 60 Million Linux powered desktop PCs globally.

That's not a huge portion of total market share but is still major by some measure.

Exactly. And I also like to remind the Apple fans that Linux's desktop OS market share today is around the same share macOS X had in the period 2002-2010, when Windows was completely dominant and before the iPhone turned so many into macS desktop users. I also like to remind them that the perspective that iOS and Android are both dominant mobile platforms is very US- and Canada-centric. In the rest of the world outside of the very richest nations, Android is dominant. And in many poor areas the world over, Linux desktop is used if for no other reason than to rejuvenate used hardware and avoid software licensing fees. So Apple knows exactly what it is doing when it avoids cross-platform development.

Cross platform (something that works well outside of Apple apps/devices)

Cross platform -> † platform -> t platform might be a better choice

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