I agree that it's a "cop-out", but the issue it mitigates is not an individual one but a systemic one. We've made it very, very difficult for apps not to rely on environmental conditions that are effectively impossible to control without VMs or containerization. That's bad, but it's not fixable by asking all app developers to make their apps work in every platform and environment, because that's a Herculean task even for a single program. (Just look at all the compatibility work in a codebase that really does work everywhere, such as vim.)