Back in time, Microsoft invested heavily in program analysis to fix those hideous BSODs due to broken third-party drivers. It was very successful.

Apple's problem is simpler as they own the code, and bugs are likely to come from understaffed engineering.

Apple's self-contained platform, huge sums of money, and massive upgrade adoption rates would make it very easy for them to ship modern software. They for some reason choose not to

iOS and OSX isn't modern software ?

I am curious about the qualities an operating system needs to be deemed "modern".

I personally love iOS and macOS and use them both daily. Though there are facets of both that I think could easily be improved given Apple's position.

Off the top of my head -

A. Slow development cycles on Safari (they're getting better, but still) while simultaneously blocking competitors on iOS

B. A number of embarrassing security failures on macOS recently

C. A lack of focus on macOS (Probably the cause of B)

Besides, it looks like the amount of cash that Mozilla got for stuff like Pocket or Mr Robot is tiny compared to their other sources of revenue. It doesn't seem something worth to taint their brandname and ethos for.

If you rule out Firefox, there's hardly any viable option for a modern, feature-complete and freedom-respecting browser. Chromium is OK, but those suspicious blobs don't look very appealing.

For me the most shocking part is that the FSF has a Firefox ESR fork, IceCat, which is hardly maintained and goes 2 versions behind mainline. They don't even bother patching CVEs...

For the record, Mozilla didn't get any money for the Mr. Robot tie-in: it was supposed to be part of a mutual cross-promotion campaign. I don't think the original Pocket integration was paid, either, though my memory there is hazy. Either way Mozilla now owns Pocket anyway.

Mozilla never directly received money for the Pocket placement, however they did get a piece of any premium sign-ups made via the Firefox integration.

Thanks for the clarification.