Why do you own an Apple device?

Not op, but hardware and UX-wise they do a great job. Photo-taking is especially good which is pretty important on a mobile. Also, their phones will be supported for a remarkable number of years, while retaining their price on second hand markets.

It doesn’t excuse them from letting me use my phone as I want to.

The op should respond since they seem to feel imprisoned, but you do not.

It sounds like you just like the quality of their product.

Apple does let you use the phone as you want to.

They just didn’t design it to do the things you say you’d prefer. I assume that you wouldn’t have made the trade off if you didn’t think it was worth it.

Liking a product enough to buy while wanting it to be designed a little differently is what we do with almost all purchases.

That is pretty much the opposite of living in a communist dictatorship.

Well, I don’t feel inprisoned, but nor am I completely happy with this phone.

iSH is really great, and is a must - and so would several other app which can’t exist here.

I presume those apps can exist on Android.

The point here is that you can actually get everting you want, just not with Apple’s design.