I do think people like Dolby Atmos, Android Auto, Airdrop, SMB, systemd, the whole of SteamOS and I think when you get down to it "tight integration but I don't like it" is the only definition you'll get that actually will encompass what people mean. Because what makes Springboard on iOS okay when on Android you can have Nova? What makes NFS okay to build in the kernel but not Airdrop? What makes Steam's overlay browser okay to tightly integrate but not Edge?

The whole OS is a mess of tightly coupled software with messy boundaries. I don't think the coupling is the thing that matters.

Dolby Atmos, at least, sounds good but it's pretty annoying because it's had the practical effect of making height channels proprietary in most systems.

Springboard definitely isn't OK.

There's no good reason that Airdrop shouldn't be in the Linux kernel and it probably would be if the protocol were well documented.

You can use game overlays other than the Steam one, so there's nothing stopping Microsoft from creating an overlay that provides the Edge browser.

Rich integrations are great but when the boundary is perceived by the user as being two different programs or systems, both sides of the integration should have well-documented public interfaces that support swapping out the other side (no "private API" funny business).

"Tightly integrated" can mean "We designed A and B to fit together well. We built them side by side and tested them together" That's perfectly acceptable and can make a fair direct case to the customer.

What's not:

* Not allowing controls to manage integrations. Maybe I want to connect A to C, D, or Q instead, or not allow a connection at all.

* Accidentally-on-purpose clobbering customer choices (ooh, whoops, we reset all your file associations for the sixth time this year, perhaps now you'll stop changing them).

* Using undocumented APIs or similar gimmicks to ensure a competitive product will be inherently hamstrung.

* Pretending a seperate product is an indivisible component of the whole. I'm sure there are a bunch of places where Edge could be pulled out in favour of an external help-file/PDF/etc viewer.

At a certain point, you’re pretty much asking for socialism. No one should be obligated to build an entire operating system that works on billion combination of potential parts, and then cater to everyone else so that they get the native experience in every way integrating with the OS.

Obviously, I want the best experience as an end-user. But I think it’s ridiculous, at a certain point you should have to invest the billions of dollars to build your own equivalent operating system. You really can’t expect all of that. Microsoft already has a pretty flexible system.

Maybe there is a business model for that massive investment. I don’t think that 100% native integration for third party applications is a big draw to most people. It’s mostly something people complain about on this forum.

Proof of that is Apple. It’s relatively inflexible, and people seem to like it quite a bit. They are doing very well. Then there’s also Linux but then people complain things aren’t tightly integrated enough.

Basically people want to have their cake and eat it too on someone else’s 1 billion dollar investment.

I think you should be able to embed a browser with your os (the browser is almost part of an os now, and there can be links between those integration), but not prevent 3rd party browsers or tie services to your browser. There is no technical reason for bing.

Your comment is ridiculous to me. We have Linux, probably supported on billion combinations, not too closely integrated with "vendor-specific" things. It's also free to use and free software, constantly being improved and extended by people around the world.

I don't much care about Windows, but as someone who has to use it for certain work I feel like I have the right to complain about Microsoft trying to force it's other products on me. And they probably could survive by having their OS be a bit more end-user friendly,, and if they couldn't, we would use some other OS.

If that’s how you feel, that’s fine. But no, Linux is not supported on 1 billion hardware combinations. It works with a lot, but there’s no single entity that supports it all like Microsoft. You’re digging into C code if you run into a problem, someone else has not before.

Linux is a server kernel primarily. It gets used elsewhere, but that’s the core focus for development. Windows is a consumer OS. They’re really two different tools for two different jobs.

The comment I was responding to asserted "we need to find a balance that allows vendors to tightly integrate their apps but prevent abusing this". My response argued that no, we don't actually need this. I don't think that being unwilling to go out of my way to find a way to support a business model I don't like is socialism because I don't happen to be a billionaire making a competing problem; if anything, you're arguing that I shouldn't use my power as a consumer to choose products that I like to influence the marketplace, and that's a far more anti-capitalist message than anything I've expressed here.

Using it and demanding that they lose pretty much all power over their own product, is nearing socialism.

What you didn’t mention before, but now you are, is that you would choose a different product that works as you described. That sounds better. The only problem is that it doesn’t exist. Again, no one is going to spend $1 billion to build a system for everyone else to essentially have native integrations into as they sit back having spent all of that money to build this hypothetical extremely flexible product. Those types of ideas are basically the typical HN pipe dream.

Well, everyone has their view, I don't think I'm any more right than you. You can give a technical definition of an OS from a CS textbook, but ultimately all of these are consumer/retail products created to benefit the end-user, not so much to create a technical design masterpiece. But that is just my view. I tend to side on the practical aspects more than design purity.

> I tend to side on the practical aspects more than design purity.

I do too, but as someone who doesn't use Outlook or Edge, having those two specific products integrate doesn't give me any practical benefits, whereas having the OS try to force products like Edge that I don't use on me because they happen to also be made by Microsoft gets in the way of me just trying to use a computer the way I want.

Oh yeah, I completely understand. I'm not necessarily in favor of forced bundling. All I'm saying is that sometimes there are benefits when there is a single vendor who can do tight integrations. Apple being the other obvious example with their (supposedly) seamless hardware ecosystem integration.

In theory, something like Linux has a good model with multiple distributions, with each making different choices for the end-user. In practice, only a handful of distributions get any kind of traction and/or support.