[chaosharmonic]

This is maybe just that I switched to Linux years ago and haven't touched Apple hardware much, but what strikes me is how little the OS matters anymore. So much of the tooling is cross-platform now, so many of the applications are web based, and so much of the native platform can know be emulated, that part of why the market share isn't guaranteed is a level of portability that didn't exist a decade or two ago.

Everything from Edge as a cross-platform Chrome derivative to .NET as a cross-platform open-source toolkit to their React Native builds and experiments with Android suggest that MS itself understands this. The Linux side demonstrates it with things like Proton and the forthcoming Android desktop mode. The Web demonstrates it in general as it expands in capability and more applications skip shipping native entirely in favor of technologies like Electron. And not that I don't personally sob in system RAM, or have extreme reservations about how we got these things (see: Google and antitrust), but I can't say I hate the ease of switchover.

Ecosystem lock-in didn't go away, but it feels like it's changed a lot.

[IshKebab]

Yeah but it's one of those cases where even if an alternative works 99% of the time, it still isn't worth it because of that 1%. Same with web browser compatible - that's why even Microsoft switched to Blink. Same with electric car range - "it covers 99% of your journeys!" isn't as persuasive as proponents would like.

[chaosharmonic]

I mean, relative to IE, everything else was the alternative.

Whereas in more recent years, keeping a closed-source rendering engine that was no longer competitive in implementing the spec, wasn't being used when people had a choice, and was being used as a dependency for core components of the OS, probably wasn't winning many arguments.

(Edit: yes, I know Chakra was open source. I meant Trident.)