No it's not! I can run whatever software I want on Windows, Mac, Android and Chromium.

> these are proprietary, private sector companies who fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders, not government entities.

I am not accusing Apple of literally breaking the first amendment. I do, however, think their actions have consequences for our society and democracy.

Imagine if side-loading books onto a Kindle was impossible, and Amazon implemented an App Store-style review process for everything sold on the Kindle store. Would you consider that a threat to free speech?

Well, consider what happened when someone made an iOS game about Apple factory workers in Foxconn: Apple killed it [1].

Now, it is absolutely Apple's prerogative to determine what is allowed on their storefront, just as any retailer can decide what to stock on its shelves. However, by completely blocking any form of side-loading, Apple is making decisions about what type of content their users are allowed to see on their devices. That's a problem if the iPhone is someone's primary computer, and perhaps their only computer.

[1] https://kotaku.com/there-was-an-iphone-game-about-foxconn-un...