This isn't a reasonable comparison. Your shitty laptop or OS was likely not part of the product. If I want a website I don't care what your laptop looks like. If I am being driven somewhere I certainly care about what condition the car is in.
Right, so sounds like Uber sensibly wants their representatives on the street to project their desired corporate image.
Thus, employees.
If a client hires me to build a web app, I get to decide how, when and where it is built. That means I get to choose if I use, say, Django or Rails on the backend, and maybe React on the front end. These are certainly part of the product.
No thats not really true, for all cases of contracting.
I, as the client, could absolutely tell you to use rails, and if you don't use rails, I can "fire" you the contractor.
Sure, some clients might not care. But some would care, and they can tell you want to do, and control what you use, and not work with you if you don't do what you say.
If I started "Daniel's Ruby Shop", collected money from clients, and paid it to you if you made Ruby websites that met standards I set, and required you to Skype me at specific times or forever be banned from "contracts" you're not an independent contractor, you're my employee.
So the workers can negotiate when, how and for how much they'll work for their clients? I've got an '01 sedan collecting dust, can I decide that's how I'm going to pick up my clients via Uber?
When I worked as a contractor, it didn't matter that I used some shitty laptop or OS to get my work done, because I had the freedom to decide how and where I completed my work. Workers using Uber are denied that freedom.