[JohnBooty]

    you, the user, should expect it to work without any tweaks or workarounds

I think that, for any reasonable definition of "it just works", it would clearly refer to essential functionality and not the extremely long tail of niche tweaks that at least one user out of millions might want to perform.

For example on Apple devices I've often wanted a feature that would let me skip PIN/FaceID authentication when connected to my home network. No such feature exists. But I'd say there's a clear distinction between a missing feature and "not just working."

Of course, "it just works" is a vague marketing phrase that they haven't used in a long time, perhaps a decade or more? So, whatever. You have the power to decide it means whatever you want it to mean, and then decide if Apple meets your made-up standard or not. I freely admit that's what I'm doing.

[karaterobot]

> I think that, for any reasonable definition of "it just works", it would clearly refer to essential functionality

Really? I always heard it as something more like "we've thought of everything, all the details, and you don't have to fiddle with our products like with Windows." I think essential functionality is always implied, with any product, but with Apple, it seemed like their promise was for a higher level of user experience than that.

Acknowledged that this is an old marketing statement (I believe it was a Jobs-ism, which dates it), but please look at the context of the thread.

[JohnBooty]

    it seemed like their promise was for a higher 
    level of user experience than that.

I think they've clearly pursued a more polished level of out-of-the-box integration and functionality for their products, not the most endlessly tweakable experience. (Whether they hit the mark or not is up to the individual to decide, but it's clearly what they shoot for)

Whether this is your cup of tea or your worst nightmare, I don't think this is particularly controversial!

Additionally, I think it's also uncontroversial that they're able to pursue/achieve a higher level of polish specifically thanks to the fact that they choose not to pursue the infinitely long tail of hardware combinations and software configurability. After all, as engineers we know that N possible feature toggles and knobs quickly can quickly approach 2^N or even N! combinations that need to be thought about and tested.

In short, I think it's sort of baffling to think that the omission of some pet niche feature equates to a piece of software "not working."

In contrast, if that omission makes you think the software stinks or simply isn't for you, that would make total sense to me.