I may be misremembering things, and I'd appreciate the correction if someone can show me my error here. When the iPhone was first released, telcos were extreme

I may be misremembering things, and I'd appreciate the correction if someone can show me my error here. When the iPhone was first released, telcos were extremely paranoid, because there were legit scams by which an abuse of the telco network could result in monetary transfers. If you called the wrong number, whether a US (and Apple was a US company first and foremost) 900 number or an international number, you might owe a great deal on your next telco bill. The original iPhone had no native code applications, only web apps, because of the paranoia resulting from scams that had been perpetrated in the 90's. The telcos required a level of security that, in the early 00's and its embrace of Adobe Flash and other high-vulnerability-surface technologies, seemed prudent. A short while later, Apple proved its security model enough to allow native code applications. This happened because, despite the initial fears of a "smart phone" being a lure for scammers, Apple's security model, which included mandating WebKit so that its security model would be imposed on anything touching the web, kept those web things separate from telco charges. Fast-forward to 2022: now we wonder why Apple keeps locking things down so that no app can use a security model that Apple has not vetted. In this era, rogue calls to Nigeria don't drain thousands of dollars from your account. Now, we wonder why Apple seems so paranoid. For me, whose memory reminds me that there was a time that telephony involved the risk of connecting to the wrong number and losing money, there seems to have been a time that "smart phones" ran the risk of presenting an attack surface that could incur dire financial consequences for individuals. I also suspect that those times have passed, but I'm not sure. I have to wonder what the intersectional implications of a more open environment for a device capable of both web browsing (with its security issues) and telephony (with its billing issues) might be. When I wonder about things like that, I'm happier with walled gardens that I would not accept on my laptop, which is not connected to a phone number and billing account. A computer running Windows and using IE is one thing, namely a computer on an IP network; a phone running iOS is two things, a computer and a telephone, and there are (or were) mechanisms by which a telephone could charge money that a computer cannot (or could not).