People Who Buy Software

I’m always weary of moralistic arguments where someone is fighting for everyone else against some big bad evil. There’s usually more to the story.

DHH, someone with whom I usually agree but find annoyingly self-righteous, has claimed his beef with Apple is over the App Store monopoly, freedom and such lofty ideals.

This slipped out in a recent interview:

It just so happened to be that the majority of the customers for that service were on Apple. About 90% of the customers that we have for HEY, use at least one Apple device. Something like 70% of the paying customers use Apple devices predominantly.

The real issue is that overlap between people who would pay a hundred dollars a year for an email service and exclusively use Apple devices is more than 70%.

DHH tries to frame this as a completely random event, “It just so happened…”, but people who pay for quality software overwhelmingly buy Apple hardware.

The groups that hate everything Apple like hardware hackers and gamers aren’t likely to pay for software.

Sidestepping the whole App Store debate, why won’t (or can’t) anyone else make hardware that people who pay for software are likely to buy?