How is this relevant to the manufacturers extorting a subscription for the existing hardware? It's totaly up to you take to pay or not for Halide. Halide doesn't gut your iPhone cameras performance if you didn't pay them.

Who said anything about gutting the performance? This is about adding a performance package that is software based. In the, albeit poor, iPhone analogy the performance camera package happens to come from a different company.

Well, if we are here for poor analogies, it's more like you gone to some 3rd-party shop and they flashed your ECU with a new firmware which gives you options your car hadn't before. And this is a thing already, for at least two decades, people are reprogramming the ECU to have more power. It's extremely popular.

What is similar in the both cases is what it's a 3rd-party option.

Look at my other comment in this thread, maybe it would be clearer what I mean.