[MountainWalker]

You need to buy Apple’s hardware to get their software. It’s a software company with a hardware lock, if you will. You can’t get their source code to port it over to your own hardware. The software is the heart of the Apple experience.

Android oem’s don’t have much interest in you after you buy their phones. Android is already developed - they just port it to their model phones and tweak it. Practically all their money comes from the device sale of the hardware. They don’t get a cut of Google Play sales unlike Apple with their app store, and few people are using their own specialty upsale bloatware apps unlike native apps in Apple’s ecosystem.

[Swordmaker]

They don’t get a cut of Google Play sales unlike Apple with their app store, and few people are using their own specialty upsale bloatware apps unlike native apps in Apple’s ecosystem.

Sorry, you’re completely wrong. Apple’s revenue stream from software is minor compared to their revenue stream from hardware. Apple gives away most of the software they publish including their operating systems and most of their productivity apps, and provide free updates as a service to their customers who buy their hardware.

The 30% sales commission Apple collects on third-party apps in the iTunes App Store, when you account for the better than 75% of apps that are FREE, covers costs of maintaining the infrastructure and operation of the App Store, which is there mainly to provide apps as a benefit for users of Apple hardware. . . so that more people will buy more Apple hardware in the Apple ecosystem. As of the tenth anniversary of the iPhone, Apple has distributed to independent app developers over $70 Billion for the apps those entrepreneurs have created and sold through Apple’s various App stores around the world.

On the Mac computer side, one is free buy software from anywhere, but software on the Mac App Store is certified safe. . . and there is a lot of free stuff there as well.

Incidentally, you can run all Windows software on a Mac if you desire.

Apple is not a software company.

[adorno]

You need to buy Apple’s hardware to get their software. It’s a software company with a hardware lock, if you will

YOU still have that completely backwards.

Apple is a hardware company. It develops its OSes to support their devices. No other company is allowed to develop OSes to run their devices. Apple does NOT develop OSes or application or services for other devices made by other manufacturers. A software company does not concentrate on its own devices. Thus, Apple is only developing software that only supports their hardware. IOW, their hardware comes first, and then the software is developed around THEIR hardware.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is a software company with interests in supporting ALL hardware out there, plus their own. That's the opposite of what Apple does.

Android OEMs don't lock in their customers. Their customers are free to go elsewhere for their next device, or back to the same maker. I don't like Android, but, it's "free" and allows their users to seek and use software from MANY software developers. For Apple devices, there is only one company that determines what you can use, even if the app is developed by a third party. The Apple ecosystem is about locking in their customers, thus, the Apple device users are NOT free to seek and use things that are not made by Apple or approved by Apple. There are no other OSes that can be used by Apple device customers, and if there were, those customers would lose their device and software warranties. Are YOU able to tell the difference yet?