Platform independence vs. Platform interoperability

There is a very interesting passage by Jurgen Appelo of NOOP.NL, which is almost completely unrelated to the idea of the post about book reading hack:

I don't want to read chapter 20, which is about platform interoperability, which I find completely uninteresting. (Let's face it: wanting to be platform-independent so that you can easily switch platforms, is just as useful as wanting to be bisexual, because it easily enables you to switch genders. Not many people think that's very important.)

While I agree with such a bright comparison of platform independence, platform interoperability is another beast. While you can kill yourself trying to have one product working equally good on different platforms, you not only may need to, but in our fast moving world have to, interoperate with other applications. And sometimes only God knows, which platform they run on.