[mikedouglas]

Average matters in the sense that I don't know which new application I might be using in six months.

Usually my computing experience is dictated by the worse interaction that day. If I have to deal with a text editor that uses tabs when I want spaces, or a note application that won't sync, it doesn't matter how nice the web browser is.

My experience on the mac has been that, generally, the developers of third party software focus on the UI. It sounds like an odd version of the "broken windows" theory, but it seems to be true. Because the average quality is so high, applications with bad user experience just don't survive. This means I can pickup the most popular task management app, and expect a certain level of polish. That is why average matters.