One of the perks of lock-in is that you don't have to stress over every defect in your product.

Nerds like us who care about running code on our machines are really the minority. Just look how little volume and revenue Apple gets from the mac (if they were run like most businesses they would have sold off or shut down the mac business long ago)

All the big tech companies are guilty of illegally suppressing competition in various ways, including locking customers into their platforms through various means.

But Apple? Nobody goes as hard as Apple does with their lock-in strategies. I personally like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm not going to assume you're just being ignorant because you love Apple. Instead, I'm curious to know what makes you doubt that lock-in isn't their entire business model?

For example, in what universe would iCloud (as it exists today) succeed if customers could actually choose an alternate cloud storage provider for their iPhone/iPad with the same level of system integration?

I have used android and windows. It's just that the Apple stuff tends to suck less (but not always, per the examples above).