Both of those products provide that functionality on paper, but they are widely different products with widely different audiences.
I think their respective "Get Started" buttons show it best: Tailscale tries to get you connected to your team and to download the client as fast and easy as possible (= it's a product for everyone in the company), while Narrowlink throws you to a lengthy explainer page that no non-technical user will bother with.
Of course you can compare apples to oranges, but if you know that a huge amount of the population is allergic to citrus fruit, it's just a waste of time to compare their dimensions or prices.
It's not arbitrarily chosen, and I wouldn't call it a criterion. I am arguing that they are different products for so different audiences, that all other criteria don't really matter.
> both of those products aim to provide secure tunnelling/network connectivity
You are talking about technical capabilities, but that still doesn't make them similar products. Figma and Miro are not similar products, just because they both provide an infinite canvas and team collaboration capabilities.
> if you know that a huge amount of the population is allergic to citrus fruit
"But guys, what about lemo—", "John, you know we all except you are alergic to citrus, don't you?", "Oh, sorry, completely forgot, let's move on".
???
I don't understand what point you're even trying to argue. If some misguided manager would come to you and ask your opinion in him chosing between Miro and Figma, presumably you'll ask him a bit about his needs and then reply with something like "Well, while technically Miro would suit you better, what you actually need is Trello" instead of, I don't know, saying "they're not simialr products, no point in comparing them" then turning your back and leaving. Right?
That's an entirely reasonable scenario IMO even if it involves meaningfully (i.e. "yep, one of those is definitely more suiting than another") comparing Trello to Figma.
Image someone drew up a comparison of Miro and Figma which listed a lot of facts that they could be compared on, but left out the parts where one is about designing and the other is about diagramming.
Now, you would like to point out that the collection of facts omits some crucial points, which likely makes the comparison useless. What would you say in that instance? In the english language, the most common idiom that has emerged for that is "that's comparing apples to oranges".
That's what the GP original comment pointed out (I assume). You replied to it, ignoring that point and not really engaging with it, and trying to dismantle the concept of "apples to oranges" as a whole.
Yeah, I think trying to take the idiom too literally reveals a lot of holes, comparing apples to oranges is a legitimate thing to do in the context of what fruit to eat, for example.
Nitpicking that particular but doesn't negate the overall meaning behind the idiom. Lots of things can be compared, but the comparison provides dubious value at best. Sure I can compare having sticky notes on a fridge to Jira, but then I'd be comparing apples to oranges.
I think their respective "Get Started" buttons show it best: Tailscale tries to get you connected to your team and to download the client as fast and easy as possible (= it's a product for everyone in the company), while Narrowlink throws you to a lengthy explainer page that no non-technical user will bother with.