This control severely limits the utility of non-stolen iPhones which is not a good thing for an iPhone owner. There are other phones that consumers can choose

This control severely limits the utility of non-stolen iPhones which is not a good thing for an iPhone owner. There are other phones that consumers can choose that don’t have this pairing. But this pairing of parts is *not* one of the reasons people chose an iPhone because most buyers were oblivious to it since Apple never told them.