It's an impressive feat, regardless of the differences in target devices. Even with the hardware configurations well known, the fact that it was done at such a large scale successfully means that even unusual edge conditions didn't crop up.
This shouldn't be downplayed, it actually speaks to why it's important to have incremental stages of software delivery. First target highly constrained environments (iOS, Watch OS, tvOS), then work on the more difficult and less constrained general computing environment.
It's absolutely an impressive feat to pull this off. But it's not quite the same problem as building a robust general-purpose FS for a diverse ecosystem.
True; and yet, it feels like there is much low-hanging fruit left in filesystens that are just built for specific vertically-integrated use-cases. A NAS hardware-appliance company, for example, could likely pull off something similar to what Apple did, and to great benefit.
It's an impressive feat, regardless of the differences in target devices. Even with the hardware configurations well known, the fact that it was done at such a large scale successfully means that even unusual edge conditions didn't crop up.
This shouldn't be downplayed, it actually speaks to why it's important to have incremental stages of software delivery. First target highly constrained environments (iOS, Watch OS, tvOS), then work on the more difficult and less constrained general computing environment.