I know almost nothing about Kindles, but can't you log in to amazon.com in Safari and buy that way?

Also, buying a Kindle seems like a surefire way to be vendor locked-in, because Amazon is so big, it can afford to not care about anything.

This is exactly what I have to do, but why am I forced to?

While Kindle is locked in, it seems to be a love child of Amazon and works extremely well. The difference between Kindle and iPhone is that Kindle is a single-purpose device, and iPhone is a general computing platform.

Apple says it's an exclusive experience, which is obviously sold to absolutely anyone who can cough up the dough.

(Snark aside, the Apple is rightfully famous for their tight integration, high-quality user experience, and that basically requires a walled garden. And it's easy to find edge cases.)

And you're forced to because they are not a charity and because they can get away with it. (Both in a legal and market forces aspect.)

You are a fashion victim to pay 1000 bucks for an Apple phone.

For 200-400 bucks you could have a great Android phone.

The problem with a $200-400 Android phone is that it runs Android. I don’t want to use Android, so it looks like that won’t work for me?

Not sure where fashion enters into it?

why don't you want to use android?

I don’t like it as much as iOS. The interface paradigms it uses I don’t enjoy. It’s a little too Linux on the Desktop for me.

the problem is this is simply not true.

i've been using android phones for the better part of the decade. last year (2019) i've inherited an iphone 6s and the reason i've upgraded this year (to an inherited 8) is that i managed to crack the screen. show me an android phone that has 5 years of support.

I have always bought cheap androids and power is never a problem, js heavy sites die under flagship phones I've owned too. You most certainly don't have to pay 1000 for a phone, it's insane amount of money for a device.

... that gets security updates for 2 years.

You can probably buy 3 different androids over for the same cost and have support for the same period. Hmm.

An iPhone's performance will completely smoke any cheap Android phone, and iPhone performance is often better than some new laptops [0]!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23539845

I've got a three year old OnePlus 5 and I've yet to encounter a single app that has been slow, so I'm not sure what value a faster phone would have for me. The only reason I'm considering upgrading is to have a better camera.

One overlooked consequence of a faster chip is less strain on a battery and thus longer battery life. While it may not necessarily affect the perceived speed of apps, it has this significant benefit to the user.

Real life performance and experience differs a lot. A cpu is part of the reason for speed but so are many other factors. It depends on your use case too.

That actually sounds, verbatim, like what Macintosh users used to say to PC folk back when they were on 68000 or PPC.