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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree with you. But I would like to add that Apple holds most of the important users - those who are the most willing to spend time and money online.

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Yeah, you could try to paint them as dominant in a specific market segment (rich people, whatever), but it would be very difficult. We're very far from the numbers Microsoft still has on the desktop, and a world apart from the 90%+ they had back in the Netscape-suit days.

9 out of 10 desktop computers still run Windows. 12% of those still run XP. There's still no 3rd option on the desktop; Linux has failed.

So, rather than fix a real problem, people start complaining about something a lot smaller: "18% of the world's phones run in a walled garden with a relatively modern browser."

While Windows XP can run Firefox ESR, iOS of any version only runs whatever it had at last OS push.

Also, Linux works fine for plenty of people, sure miniscule in proportion, but it hasn't failed.

Linux has always been fine for a minuscule proportion. It has failed to be a viable 3rd option on the desktop for 98% of the population.

Who cares?

People who think competition brings innovation. If 90% of cars were made by General Motors...

When you have 90% market share, you have a monopoly. It hinders innovation.

It does though. If Linux & Apple didn't exist, Microsoft would have a much shitty product. Kind of like apple's browser, since it doesn't matter that they keep it up to date since they have lock in.

Sounds convincing but a lie. Unfortunately, those pesky facts just keep getting in your way. Microsoft has always been the laggard in browser standards.

https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

https://html5test.com/results/mobile.html

Sure, Apple has made Microsoft a little better but the monopoly that Microsoft has really means that they don't need to compete.

Linux makes browsers? I'm talking about the OS.

But it has succeeded in being a viable desktop for software development for the web. I wouldn't call that a complete failure on the desktop.

98% of computer-using population will use whatever comes with the machine; Linux is viable but the hardware vendors are not pushing it, also because of Microsoft lobbying. On the other hand Android could be easily built on top of QNX and get the same market share.

I didn't ask anyone for an excuse.

Um, you could paint them as dominant in a "specific market segment" such as the entire US, too:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/02/apples-iphone-gain...

Apple's mobile market share in the US: 43.5% Samsung: 28.7% LG: 8.2% Motorola: 5.1% HTC: 3.8%

It always makes me laugh when people still, in 2015, try to pretend that Apple isn't dominant and getting more dominant with time, in the mobile space.

The words "dominant" or "powerful" or even "market leading" are not even close to the same thing as a monopoly. And the difference is extremely substantive.

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