Thing is that laws haven't really followed the state of the market. You hear the excuse commonly here - "They don't have a monopoly so it's ok!". It's not and it's damaging the basic way how free markets do and should function - essentially the integrated, DRMed, lockeddown systems prevent choice which is the basic driving force of market innovation. Right now we're in a state where a few companies (mostly Apple, Amazon, Google) pretty much funnel and lock you into a narrow choice of products and then lock them down in a way to basically make choosing a product that helps you the most as hard as possible.
Which means they just made "voting with the wallet" infinitely harder - you can't choose a phone with headphone jack, because you're locked into iOS ecosystem which means that your choice of phone has resulted in your choice of communication platform (iMessage), house appliances (HouseKit), TV (AppleTV), source of media (iTunes), car (CarPlay and iPod integration) and others. If you want to exercise your choice as a consumer, you're essentially forced to give a lot of things to get a feature you want and that also hides consumer wishes to the corporations themselves.
The state of electronics market is getting pretty dire, sometimes I'm starting to feel like we're back in 1985 on the eastern side of Iron Curtain with a single item of each type on the store shelf.
You can choose your own messaging platform (WhatsApp, Line) home appliance integration (Zigbee), media player (Spotify, Tidal), TV (Plex), car integration (Bluetooth). I use all of those apps and technologies daily and none are dictated by Apple.
Well, I'm afraid you kinda missed my larger point due to a nitpick into an example. Please replace it with something else appropriate (physical keyboard? USB-C or microUSB port? whatever really) and argue about that :/
How about we just don't argue at all, because you're clearly misinformed if you think iTunes is the only way to get music on iOS. Or pretty much any of your other assertions.
Then you should have mention that and not use your weak arguments to try to prove your point.
I have an iPhone and I don't use HomeKit, AppleTV, CarPlay or the iTunes Store, and use Whatsapp instead of iMessage.
And I'm afraid I can't see how replacing the headphone jack with a physical keyboard would make your argument better. If you want to charge your phone using microUSB there are hundreds of options.
Which means they just made "voting with the wallet" infinitely harder - you can't choose a phone with headphone jack, because you're locked into iOS ecosystem which means that your choice of phone has resulted in your choice of communication platform (iMessage), house appliances (HouseKit), TV (AppleTV), source of media (iTunes), car (CarPlay and iPod integration) and others. If you want to exercise your choice as a consumer, you're essentially forced to give a lot of things to get a feature you want and that also hides consumer wishes to the corporations themselves.
The state of electronics market is getting pretty dire, sometimes I'm starting to feel like we're back in 1985 on the eastern side of Iron Curtain with a single item of each type on the store shelf.