It is shitty they killed libspotify, but it isn't hard to reverse engineer the way the app communicates with the backend, this has already happened in the form of https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot as an example.

And if Apples ecosystem wasn't so locked down I could write a HomePod client using librespot and Daniel Ek could get however mad he wants about it.

librespot is a fine piece of engineering, but because it’s reverse engineered there’s a risk of getting banned for using it, which a lot of people aren’t going to want to take a chance on. It also means that apps built on it can’t promote themselves too much or gain wide usage without risk of Spotify coming after the app’s developer and/or librespot.

"Just" make the implementation imitate some old Spotify Connect hardware that isn't being updated anymore and it would be near impossible for Spotify to realistically tell the difference.

Sure, people would still worry about using such software, but from an engineering standpoint, unless there's a signed Spotify Connect chip that for some reason can't be emulated, there isn't much Spotify can do to detect well-implemented reverse engineered API clients.

Not something you throw together in a day obviously, but definitely not impossible.

The point remains that they’re throwing stones in a glass house. There’s no reason that they should be held to any lower of a standard than any other company.

There's scale. Spotify being dicks doesn't impact as many users as Apple being dicks.

But I agree with you in general!