This article misses a big part of the Unix philosophy. Modularity and extensibility are just as important as do only one thing and do it well. Unix works because a lot of small programs can be chained (piped) together to interoperate. Apps often don't do this very well or at all.
> Underpinning it all is the 2nd Unix philosophy of text outputs, so the data one app exports can be imported by another. That’s how you can export your address book from Outlook and import it into Gmail, and it’s the same principle that lets web APIs connect software with built-in integrations and connection tools like Zapier, IFTTT, Segment, and more.
Looks like author mentioned that. I guess, the change is in the name - and perception.
Certainly in perception. In the Unix philosophy, interoperability is central to the function of the program. It seems to me that apps only have this added as a secondary function, if at all. You can't easily fork an email stream so that part of your incoming mail goes to Outlook and part to Gmail, say based on subject or sender.
Depending on what you consider "easy" that could be untrue. If you used your public email address as "ingress" you could auto-forward to zapier, which would in turn forward to a gmail only address or an outlook only address conditionally.
It's a little tedious to set up, but no code has to be written.
To be fair, I think the microservice architecture addresses this idea on the web. Moving towards smaller interoperable pieces is something that the internet has been doing for a bit Imo
