The curation and walled garden rules can work and have a lot of upsides for a lot of users. The problem is the inconsistent application of those rules that ultimately hurt independent and small time developers. A lot of whom are making the most interesting software for the platform rather than churning out a client to support some existing service.

> I'm pretty happy with the walled garden approach and the stores on iOS

The walled garden can stay, but users should have a simple way to opt-out. Like for example SIP on macOS which you can (temporarily) turn off with a terminal command, if you accept the risks of degraded security.

Apple (or Google/any company) should not have the power to dictate which software we may use. Like for example any banking app that wants to use NFC for wireless payments being rejected. It has taken way too long for the EU to step in and forbid this in my opinion.

I don’t like being given the choice of owning my phone or being able to talk to my friends (iMessage.) That’s actually a pretty big deal.

I wonder if you really like it, or have the Tesla/Jeep psychology where you have high customer satisfaction, but on paper, the quality is poor.

Apple is best in class in marketing.