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I'd argue that Apple are a hardware and software company - the unison of the two has been central to much of their success.

As someone who's had used iTunes on Windows, many, many years ago (And MacOS9 before that), Apple software 'quality' is a special circle of hell.

iTunes for Windows is hot garbage

They want you to buy a Mac. It's likely somewhat intentional.

iTunes for Mac is slightly less-hot garbage.

They need to refactor the monolithic app that does everything into smaller, more focused apps. My media player shouldn't also do document management for my phone.

I didn't use iTunes for Windows, but I did use one for Mac a couple of times. I can imagine how terrible the Windows one must be if it's worse than the garbage they ship for Mac. No use case I needed from it was ever easy or worked as I wanted...

It’s equal opportunity garbage - iTunes on Mac is also awful :)

Configuring an Airport Express was always painful.

Could I draw your attention to iTunes for Windows?

Note that the grandparent said: Have any hardware companies ever written good accompanying software?

I think this should be read as an existential quantification. Sure, not all Apple software is great, but for a hardware company Apple has made a lot of great software (or: for a software company, Apple has made a lot of awesome hardware).