The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores the market consequences of Apple doing that sort of thing. Clearly, it is quite profitable — we can see the direct and indirect impacts to Apple's bottom line, and the other major phone company is trying to do the same thing. The result of this behavior being permitted at all, is that reasonable phones become unavailable. Even if some niche company makes such a phone, it will be very expensive and very poorly supported with interfacing with the rest of the world. This de-facto forces everyone into such a hobbled phone.

This would be understandable if there were real advantages to having phones hobbled in this way, but this is not the case. It's analogous to every car company putting spyware in. Most people don't know or care enough to care, but the spyware is still not meaningfully helping them. It's ubiquitous because it's profitable and you can't get a car that is not designed as profit seeking endeavor first and foremost.

>> If you don’t like that, just don’t buy from them…

That’s such a lazy argument. The restrictions shouldn’t exist in the first place. Or at the very least should exist in a way that can be disabled for those that actually want control over the stuff they own.

> If you don’t like that, just don’t buy from them…

This line of thinking only works as long as there are decent alternatives that exist. Now that Google is going this way too, the alternatives just plainly don’t exist at all, especially for those bank/government/security apps depending on Play services.

So now that the status has changed and the change has been announced, it'll OK if it's forevermore impossible to buy a well-supported phone that lets you run whatever software you please?

On edit: By the way, that's the biggest reason I don't use Apple, and the biggest reason I haven't used Apple since "smart phones" became a thing. Otherwise Apple is superior in a lot of ways. I do realize that people who give a shit are a tiny sliver of the market...