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millstone

Accessibility comes to mind. Apple's investment in accessibility cannot be explained through bean counting.

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Can't it?[1]

3.2 million people visually impaired in 2015, 8.2 with vision problems, in the US alone, trend hard upwards.

[1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/visual-impairm...

I don't like Apple much but their accessibility is outstanding, putting windows, android and desktop Linux to shame.

I am not saying they aren't doing a great job in that area, just that that great job is not necessarily motivated entirely by altruism ;)

Good point, I may have read too much into your message.

I disagree. With a family member living with ALS, we had to wean them off of Apple products so that we could switch to a supported eye-tracking platform on windows. Apple had no os-level support for this and windows does.

Would this have helped?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqoXFCCTfm4

Unfortunately, no - My family member has lost the ability to speak as this is one of the progressions of ALS - there comes a point where you have to use specialized input equipment, all of which work with USB and none of which work with iOS or MacOS

Interesting, I'll admit I know nothing about eye tracking, I'm more familiar with blind accessibility, zooming, that kind of thing. I'll keep this in mind in future.

I have a completely blind friend. The main reason he uses a Mac and an iPhone is because of their awesome accessibility. He's got a Linux and Windows computer too, Windows because some software he uses is only available on Windows and Linux for when he codes in his free time (you can do basically everything in the terminal anyway).

If Android ever becomes as good at accessibility he told me he'd switch in a heart beat. But, the fact that Apple is so good gives him a lot of brand loyalty and he invests in the newest iPhone on release.

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