Sure, there should be more platforms available. I'm into that. Personally, I bought an iPhone because of the closed ecosystem. I don't want to have to think about my phone that much, but I want to be able to rely on it. That's what I paid for and that's what I'm getting.
From my perspective demanding that the platform be open to any and everything is a bit like going to a carwash and demanding they also do your house.
> I don’t want to have to think about my phone that much, but I want to be able to rely on it.
I’m in the exact same boat; I have no interest in sideloading every app that decides to get into a pissing match with Apple (and as Spotify’s hinted at it before, they will certainly be losing my subscription if I need to sideload their app). For every app that has a legitimate reason to sideload (i.e. payments), there will be another app that sideloads to bypass the user-beneficial aspects of the App Store (i.e. Onavo from Facebook).
That sounds terrible. Myriad incompatible ways to find apps, having to give your financial information to lots of different systems you have to investigate individually, or not be able to do business with someone using a different system, apps only being available on the small number of devices running the OS they were developed for.
All the things you mention benefit massively from network effects, which can greatly benefit consumers.
that is a weird complaint because that is the status quo due to closed platforms, I can't run facetime on an android phone.
Diverse ecosystems develop protocols to enable interoperability, that's where the slogan "protocols, not platforms" comes from. This is how the internet works, despite the fact that you can hook up anything from a fridge running windows ME to a supercomputer running suse to it, everyone communicates just fine.
what's crazy is harping on a technicality about the word "monopoly" and then to ignore the actual issue that is implied by the criticism, market power.
Even two companies aren't a market, if you get hung up about monopoly call it a duopoly. The state of affairs is ridiculous. There should be a thriving market of competing stores, payment systems, operating systems and so on, yet we're stuck with at best two alternatives, both of which are extremely locked down.