As a Mac user I might be missing something obvious - why do they need iPhone support on their computer?

Backups. Copying photos. Sharing files. As a Mac User, you're probably well served with backups integration in Finder, as well as iCloud, AirDrop, iMessage, and friends without realising it.

Eh? I don't have an iPhone, but my mum does and she uses it fine without a Mac. Everything just syncs to iCloud, if there is some benefit to connecting it to a Mac then I'm genuinely unaware of it.

Do you mean like...iTunes? Huh?

I know approximately zero people who still tether an iPhone to a desktop for any sort of backups.

Even if it was still a thing (and it really isn’t, imo), libimobiledevice does a decent job already, and given a little funding it shouldn’t be super hard to close the gaps and build a nice UI on top of it. But that’s not happening because very few people care about it at all.

Now, AirDrop support is a completely different beast. But it requires hardware support (promiscuous mode, iirc) that many common chipsets simply lack.

The only integrations that matter to me are Messages and notifications for phone calls, neither of which are even available on Windows AFAIK, and could just as usefully be implemented as a Web app as a native Windows app if Apple chose to do so.

Oh, and USB tethering, but in my recent experience that's harder to get working on Windows 11 than on Linux (had to find the correct driver manually on catalog.update.microsoft.com as neither Windows Update nor any of the Apple Windows apps installed it, only to have some update or other remove it without my knowledge or consent a few weeks later).

Losing Music, Photos, and File sharing, along with reliable backups, is a downgrade enough.

Your response and the parent sounds like the comments on DropBox thread. It is detached from reality of consumers and fails to contribute direction that can actually move the needle.

Could you describe the "reality of consumers", because it sounds like you just time travelled from 2011.

I read your comment. This doesn't expand on how dated your claim is whatsoever. Acting pissy and mysterious about your claim doesn't help either.

You literally claimed these are exclusive to Windows if not a Mac. Not only do very close to zero Mac users do this on their Mac -- do you understand we can copy and share photos and files right on the iPhone? -- on Windows the dominate way people do this is a web browser. You know, exactly the same web browser that works on basically any computer.

As a longtime iPhone user with Macs and Windows, I was legitimately confused by your weird claim of a dependency on Windows. The more comments you've made, the more certain I am that you actually have no idea what you're talking about.

It is pretty clear that you have no idea about the level of seamless integration between iPhone and Windows via iTunes, from Music to Photos and file sharing.

I have no idea how being able to share something right on the iPhone or via browser on Windows has to do with this.

No.