Ken Blake wrote:

It's not a matter of functionality not existing. No two pieces of
software that essentially do the same thing do it in exactly the same
way.

Yup. I used to sell to the government, where they asked me to give them a
list of things, however minor, that our software did that the competitor
didn't do - and then - they wrote /that/ list into the bid contract.

Trust me - the competitor's product was essentially the same functionality
as ours - but they weren't /exactly/ alike.

It's the difference between pork bellies, and two specific pork bellies.

They are all different.

Yup. Windows is the same as Linux which is the same as Mac at what they
/do/ overall - but each one is different.

Android is the same as iOS at what they do (e.g., they both make phone
calls) - but each one is different.

Hispanics are the same as Italics are the same as Germanics, but they have
a category on government forms for Hispanics but not for the other
Caucasians who are no different.

I've heard that there are differences in everything, and even two
snowflakes are different at some level.

Two pieces of granite are different at some level.
Two #2 Phillips screwdrivers are different at some level.
Two #2 pencils are different at some level.

Two cups of coffee are different at some level.
Two 100Watt light bulbs are different at some level.
Two tablets of penicillin are different at some level.

I've heard this a thousand times from people who don't want to think.

IMHO, anyone who says that things are so different that you can't lump them
together in some sort of sensible category is definitely not an engineer,
scientist, nor an organized thinker.

Sometimes the differences are small;
sometimes they are greater.

Yup. Some #2 pencils are softer or harder than other #2 pencils.
You make a statement that nobody could disagree with, so I won't.

Sometimes the differences don't matter to
me (or to you); sometimes they do.

Yup. Some pebbles of granite are different than other pebbles of granite.
Maybe it matters to you; maybe it doesn't.

Sometimes the difference are in
features that I (or you) use a lot; sometimes they are features that I
(or you never) use. And so on.

Yup. Some watches tell time in diamond studs; others use painted letters.

So for those reasons, any of us can prefer one piece of software to
another competing one.

Yup. Some puppies have blue eyes, while others have green eyes.

And we don't all have the same preferences.

Yup. Some of us married blondes, while others married brunettes, and others
still married black-haird women.

To
take an example, I prefer FireFox to other browsers; I know many other
people who prefer Chrome, which I don't like at all; I even know a few
people who like Edge.

Yup. I have all the browsers. I must have 20 of them. I use each one for a
single web site. I don't care what they are for the most part, but some do
vpn, and others don't while some require background services while others
don't - and yet - they all browse the web.

Yes, with browsers, which are all (almost all?) free, it's not a
matter of freeware vs payware, but it doesn't matter; my point
remains: there is still lots of room for people to have different
preferences, even though they essentially all do the same thing: load
web pages.

We agree. What does WinZip do that 7Zip doesn't do that matters?
There's no way I'm ever going to disagree since I've been down this track a
thousand times - where there are always people who want to tell me that one
cigarette is different than another or that one ear of corn is different
than another.

Technically, they're always right - so I'm not going to argue with you that
one apple is different than another apple.

But if you want another example, I greatly prefer WordPerfect to all
other word processors (including Microsoft Word, which is most
people's preference).

Yup. Microsoft Office is to Libre Office as one pork belly is to another.

They are other word processors available,
including several which are free. And despite all word processors
essentially doing the same thing, the differences are enough that
what's liked by one person isn't necessarily liked by everyone.

Yup. Cara Cara oranges are different than Navel Oranges.
Who can disagree with any of your premises? Not me.

I'm glad you admit that "Never is an app worth paying for" was an
incorrect statement, but I don't even agree with you that "rarely" is
correct.

Here's the first place we can meaningfully agree in that I'm old. Very old.
Really really really old. I've installed, oh, I don't know, thousands of
software in my time.

I've solved thousands of problems, and maybe even tens of thousands of
software problems in my day, and in doing so, rarely have I needed to
purchase software for home use. (Business is different as the environment
is completely different.)

I agree that it often isn't (at least to me, but not
necessarily to everybody), but it is often enough that even "rarely"
isn't a good word to use.

We can disagree on this one since, for me, it's rare that I can't find a
freeware program to do what I want it to do, whether that's drawing curved
arrows or an SMB server or an FTP client or a screenshot command or a
personal calendar or a MUA or a Usenet client or a compression program, or
whatever.

And *most* important, how often an application is worth paying for
depends on *who* it is that wants to make a choice of applications.
You (and many others) might not think that Program A is worth paying
for and B is just good; I (and many others) might think that for my
needs, A is much better than B and is well worth paying for. Because
programs, even programs doing the same thing, vary so greatly, and
because we all work in different ways, we all have different tastes.

I have a little story to tell that agrees with what you say, where I have a
relative who is always buying software. She bought, for example, a CD/DVD
burner package, which, to me, is crazy given that ImgBurn exists.

She bought a screenshot program, where I can't imagine why anyone couldn't
work with the free stuff. She even pays when the free stuff on a new
computer expires, which, well, which I think is crazy, but, it's what
people do.

Hence, I can't disagree with anything you've said except in terms of
degrees, where everyone puts different weights on everything we're talking
about.