[LeifCarrotson]

Many want those things, but that doesn't imply that offering yet another option for the median customer, imitating the average or market leader, is the optimal strategy either in our current economic/corporate systems or an idealized system with different rules.

Yes, there are economies of scale that come from chasing the middle, and yes, it's probably easier to just mimic an iPhone than to do the creative work to try to invent something better than what worked before. And yes, the tradeoffs, design goals, economic targets, and principles of repairability and customizability that go into, say, an F150 make those pretty popular trucks, but since Ford is still making F150s, and Chevy, and Dodge, and Toyota also have offerings that are direct competitors in that space, that doesn't mean that a hypothetical competitor can maximize their market share by making yet another F150.

Why does everything cluster into the same choices?

[chii]

> Why does everything cluster into the same choices?

i suspect it's the same reason you get a cluster of the same stores/shops in a region.

It's the classic economic dilemma - Hotelling's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law)