AirDrop? Handoff? Fully encrypted iCloud storage, a first-of-its-kind offering that no other mass market OEM has been able to match? Apple pay leading the market and getting mobile vendors to literally adopt contactless payments for the first time? Mobile video chat that took Google years to replicate? The list goes on. I don't know how one could say their software isn't powerful. It is.

Shipping features that only work in a first party hardware ecosystem simplifies development a lot.

Of those, only Apple Pay has a touch point with non-Apple products, no? And enabling it was more business bludgeon than software feature.