Destroying competition by removing the consumer choice for vertical integration in service of strong security, privacy, reliability, etc.... is mistaken.

It's competing at the wrong level.

The iPhone is a toaster. Nobody's up in arms about whether the toaster takes other manufacturer's crumb tray. It's a television, and nobody's demanding QLED and OLED be swappable. It's a console. Xbox doesn't play PS5 games. It's fine.

There's no real line between hardware / firmware / software / malware ... For what Apple offers consumers, every layer of whateverware should be trusted.

Drawing imaginary lines based on the embodiment or substrates for logic gates is mistaken.

There are lots of phones. Lot's of different philosophies. Stop taking away consumer right to pick a philosophy and design for an end to end experience. It's fine.

Nothing about allowing others equal access to the OS means that someone can’t still choose Apple’s first party services and products.

It’s not an either/or thing, it’s about preventing so called gatekeepers from anticompetitive behavior via favoring their own accessories and services while simultaneously preventing any others from possibly competing.

There’s no valid reason at all a third party smartwatch shouldn’t be able to integrate to the same level as an Apple Watch. No reason third party Bluetooth earbuds shouldn’t be able use ADWL for automatic device switching, etc.

Want to still use only Apple? Great, nothing says you can’t. But at least it would be user choice and there would be actually competition which would lead to better products for all.

Can’t believe I lived to see the day that people on HN start defending vendor lock in and closed platforms as a good thing. Have all the hackers retired?