Not sure I get your point since I'm not super familiar with the Windows phone. If the argument is that the Windows phone was locked down and could only load software from a Microsoft store, then I'm glad it died. Same way I'm glad Internet Explorer as the default on Windows had government action taken against it. Let me use my machine for my code. I don't care if you are Apple or Microsoft or whoever. I do not care if you "own" your company, the fact is that if you sell me a device, I want to to own my device by running whatever I want.
Okay, so you're an absolutist about this. I think that's fine, but it doesn't jive with my experience that not everyone wants to be (or is even capable of being) their own IT department. This quote by Benedict Evans resonated with me:
"It sometimes just amazes me that people who actually work in the tech industry, and are in their 30s and 40s, claim that it would be just fine if smart phones had the same app security and privacy model as the Mac or Windows, and that there is no benefit at all from additional controls. Where have these people been for the last 30 years? You seriously want to let any developer do whatever they want to a device that billions of people carry around every day?"
I would honestly be fine if Apple was at least as lenient as Android in terms of sideloading. Doesn't seem like a big ask to me, given that just about every other phone manufacturer in the world except for Apple does it and the world hasn't ended. Apple has other issues beyond the software thing, but saying that you shouldn't be allowed to actually own a device you purchased because "apple owns 100% of iphones!" is very silly to me.
