There's the software politics side of this. They're abstract and legalistic. I think there is merit in thinking about this stuff in terms of freedom, abuse of m

There's the software politics side of this. They're abstract and legalistic. I think there is merit in thinking about this stuff in terms of freedom, abuse of market power & such. There are definitely things companies can do that make the tech ecosystem worse for users and we need to watch out for them. But there are also costs to legal interventions, antitrust and such. Getting regulators involved means these decisions will be made based on provable things and rigid rules and that's not ideal here. The best thing for users, progression of technology and such are pretty subjective issues. Legalistic systems are not good at making these kinds of decisions. They're not optimal either, perhaps worse than just eating things play out. Remember that the IE/MS stuff from the 90s basically sorted itself out. The legal interventions had little effect on the long term. Yes, IE dominance may have slowed down the development of the web for a while. But, the quality gap between IE & Firefox/Chrome combined with improvements in software distribution via the web got the market back to solid competition pretty quickly. Meanwhile the long antitrust stuff was a huge, expensive distraction. There are genuine reasons for locking down iOS. The reality is that putting power in users hands also creates complexity. The ability to change settings is also the ability to screw up settings. Can't change also means "can't screw up." If a computer has features like this which a user doesn't understand, they effectively reduce the power of that computer for them. I'm not saying that Apple made the right decisions. I'm not saying their motivations are all about user experience or that the desire to dictate users' maps, browsers, calendars, doesn't play a role. "blatantly self-interested and user-hostile stance" sounds a little strong to me, but it's not completely unreasonable. What I am saying is that we have no perfect solution to these things. If the choice is leave it to Apple & competition or get judges & lawyers involved, I prefer to let it play out unless things get pretty bad.