I was speaking of the Mac. Who "invests" in iOS games, and would care to play them for years on end? For the huge majority, it's a casual thing.
Same with movies. Anybody who invested "four-digit-sums" in digital movies should just move on, like people did with VHS, DVD, and other early formats (and people had even more substantial collections there -- they had been burned enough times not to invest in digital movies). Besides, their "digital movies" already would look archaic in today's 4K screens (unless the service updates them).
>and it's not just Apple - I, for example, got my Amazon account blocked for unpaid bills back from a time where I was financially ... unstable, to say the least, and I literally have no way of ever getting that account reinstated and thus access to my three-digit-worth ebook collection!
That's a separate issue -- not being able to reinstate a rental account is crazy, especially if one doesn't only think of US, Japan, Western Europe and co, but the huge 70% of the world, where temporary issues with stability (in jobs, economy, etc) can often lead people to unpaid bills.
I'm not talking about games only, there also is a vast amount of productivity software on the iOS platform.
> For the huge majority, it's a casual thing.
And for those who fall into the category of "whales" in F2P or pay-to-win games, it's sometimes six figures.
> like people did with VHS, DVD, and other early formats
For a DVD, I can grab an USB DVD drive - or my BD player. Which will play back anything down to a CD-ROM. The content is easily accessible, and if I want I can do a bit perfect backup even for copyrighted stuff with AnyDVD. For a VHS tape, I actually have a dual-head player - it can do recording on both tape and DVD, as well as transfer a VHS tape to DVD. (Yes, tapes are really oldschool)
How much productivity software exists on iOS that's available for Android that you don't pay for via a subscription that allows you to use the same software on any platform?
No, they are not. The only thing to buy anything on iOS is the App Store, and it is not transferable - the only things transferable on the iOS Stores are, as both you and I mentioned, music (of course, excluding music bought prior to the no-DRM switch!) and stuff like newspaper subscriptions bought on iOS stores but bound to an account on the newspaper's platform.
Steam is for OS X only (not iOS) and there are no major games on OS X that are not available on Windows (but a huge number of games not available on OS X, thus creating a lock-in to Windows).
> Same with movies. Who even buys those?
It's about the collection you have. I personally have no stakes in that game as all I have is physical media, but I know people with four-digit-sums investments in digital movies and other purchases. For them, the vendor lock in is real (and it's not just Apple - I, for example, got my Amazon account blocked for unpaid bills back from a time where I was financially ... unstable, to say the least, and I literally have no way of ever getting that account reinstated and thus access to my three-digit-worth ebook collection!).