> this situation hasn't improved much in twenty years
It's gotten much worse. Now you have iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, wed, and Linux(?). In 2000, you had Windows. You couldn't do anything interesting on mobile, Web 2.0 (cringe) wasn't a thing, and Mac's market share was about 3%.
I think the point they were trying to make is that in a world with platform monopoly, just making your app for that platform is a logical path for a developer
