Apple have always done this. It's not just that they've tried, this has been the cornerstone of their marketing since forty years ago. They have never once attempted to be more open, and all the people who buy their products loved them for this.

The limited scope isn't what their customers love, its the decent experience. From a consumer perspective there isn't a direct positive to draw from it.

To participate in society I agree. However this is not apple's fault. They didn't conspire with android to make this happen. All they did, along with android was design a product that people wanted to buy over their competition, and end up being one of the dominant players.

The green bubbles disagrees with that.

There is nothing stopping a competitor from existing and competing with apple.

There is sooooooo much stopping a competitor from existing. Just the hardware blockade alone makes starting a smartphone OS that isnt one of the big 2 basically impossible.

If you try just getting the necessary information for implementation of thenecessary hardware, modems from QUALCOMM, SOCs, etc non of that is remotely public. Like if you even try finding an SOC, not even phone related, they wont even let you through the front door docs wise. You get a pretty minimal datasheet, and thats it. Thats before you even get into minimum order quantity sizes that you cant play with.

That is to say, you dont need millions, but billions to even attempt something fresh from the ground up, and both android and ios depend on their moat of an impossibly high barrier to entry to start. Then, even further than this, you now have to deal with a lack of app support.

AFAIK you can do so on android, as long as it doesn't compromise security for the user.

This is ... not true. To put it differently, google has some really convenient definitions of "security for the user".

Just like Apple, they rely on not giving access to all of the phones features to developers so that they can have an insurmountable moat to create and destroy developers at will. They have the play store which is a barrier to any amount of reasonable financial success, they have special access to the os so they can do things like for instance, record phone calls, that magically they feel developers shouldnt be able to have access to anymore (this has asterisks but is correct enough to stop there), and they have access to crazy akmounts of user data that the users is forced to give away due to the lack of options and the non functionality of custom roms with necessary daily life activities (like banking etc).

Obviously apple doesn't allow this to as near an extend, but again, this is why people buy apple

I just do not think this argument has been remotely substantiated. Its something they like to say to avoid the looming anti trust lawsuits and what they try to say to argue against EU legislation, but it seems like competent governments are seeing through this thin veil of bs.

All industries end up with a few businesses that become stable establishments in the end.

Due to capitalism, but that means that they need to be regulated, as I recommended.

Currently these companies have nearly free rein to do whatever they want because politicians are bought and too old to understand the implications of ... many things.

If they become a monopoly

Anti trust laws dont require absolute monopolies. Heck, monopoly laws dont even require it. Its a common misconception and no clearer can this be seen than with Microsofts huge fine in the early 2000s when they certainly did not have a 100% monopoly and something like I believe 85% at the time. Android is at roughly the mid 70s.

The point is, there is no reason not to regulate these companies heavily.

But if they aren’t, they aren’t doing anything wrong.

This is a legality = morality argument which is inevitably circular. It inherently shuts down any conversation discussing changes to legality by saying that its moral because its legal, and therefore cannot be immoral.

And I don’t see what apple is doing wrong and keeping it’s locked garden for it’s users that like this sort of enclosed well organized place.

Once again, thats what Apple says, but not a tear was shed when they were forced to adopt USB-C. Not a tear was shed when they were forced to allow other payment methods and the sideloading of apps in the EU.

People want choice. They just have limited options, and they are more than happy to accept choice when the government forces apple to make it available.