I’m just not sure why they should be forced to open a platform they made and own so other people who don’t own it can get what they want. If I sell property I don’t have to give mineral rights and the purchaser accepts that up front. Why should phones be any different. Should we force all software companies to give us the source code of their proprietary software that we buy? They sell us compiled versions of it which are not hack friendly. If we can get upset at Apple for controlling it’s platform why not lash out at all the software markets?

The problem is it's not completely closed. It's open, but they control the only gate into the system. That's a monopolistic practice, very akin to owning all the railroads. Actually it's probably worse than that, because the railroads were only about the transport of goods and people. Most people do more on their phones than anything else. People literally have sex on their phones now, and control their important peripherals (sometimes medical devices) with them.

I'd be a lot more amenable to allowing Apple to make as much money as they want on controlling the only gate into my phone if their only incentives were monetary, but the moment they started making political decisions (banning all vaporizer apps, removing the Hong Kong flag emoji, banning Parler, etc) I was no longer on their side. You can agree or disagree with their decisions on each individual case, but as a liberal I'm not comfortable with a private organization having that much power over public policy. On some level I want to give Apple a way out. My best hope for the company is that they'd prefer not to be making political decisions, but have to bow to external political pressure. I'd like us to help them out and take the decision out of their hands.

As to being able to leave Apple. The amount of work it would take for me, a professional Software Engineer, to decouple all of my contacts, data, personal photos, text history, etc from their ecosystem effectively locks me in. They created a marketplace, and when you create a market in a free market society we'll take you up on it and enforce anti-trust laws. The idea that they don't have monopolistic power is demonstrably false. In fact, I think Apple's monopoly is the most clear cut in the tech community.

I understand it sucks being so reliant on a 3rd party and entrenched in their system but I’m sure you understand that they can legally “sunset” the App Store as a project like Google loves doing and not allow any new software on the device at all. We can’t enter into a contract with a company and expect to get something other than what was in the agreement. Just because a large part of the population starts relying on a privately provided resource does not make it a public utility. Relying on 3rd parties always involves a risk that they will eventually decide to change whatever you are relying on. We all hopefully know and understand that before deciding to make it a mission critical part of a pipeline

I don't disagree with you on some level, but I also think that society should have the right to say, "Okay, you've become a public utility now. Your market power is becoming a black-hole. Consider your market monopoly revoked". We have the right to do and say that as a society. We should do it sparingly and very carefully, but there's no reason we can't do it.

I'm just not sure why I should be forced to accept restrictions on hardware I bought and paid for.

Unfortunately, unless they told you that you would be receiving something they did not give you before you made the purchase, you are entirely responsible for the fact you have a piece of restricted hardware. Why buy something you know you aren’t going to like?

Why should society accept general purpose computing devices being arbitrarily locked down?