Reasonable people can disagree about which features are and are not useful. And those reasonable people can purchase smartphones and computers which best cater to their own views about these features.
If Apple had a dominant market position in smartphones then one could argue that end customers don't have much of a choice, but Apple only has at most 50% market share in the US and much lower globally. For my own smartphone usage I would much rather Apple choosing which features and APIs that third-party developers (of apps and websites) can use rather than those developers being able to do whatever they want. I think it's pretty clear that developers tends to have a much more hostile relationship with their end users than Apple does with their customers.
The argument is not about market domination, but about money power
Apple market is rich, it is the richest tech company, with the highest market valuation ever, one cannot avoid it
So it's gonna drive adoption no matter what
Like it did for Flash (right or wrong, they did it)
I was writing web applications during the 90s, they were called intranets back then, IE wasn't bad, it was simply unavoidable
And being unavoidable halted competition for more than a decade
On another side: having a platform that doesn't obey to common standards creates tech segregation
I remember seeing japanes phones 20 years ago, they were ahead of time,but unusable outside of Japan
Last but not least, having a flag that says "allow me to shoot myself in the foot of I want to" it's less hostile than "you don't know what you're doing let me handle it for you"
So then write for all browsers, support what you can for each, and don’t promote Chrome anymore? If you continue to promote a one size fits all browser and the market moves that way then we’ll shortly be having this same discussion about Google. If you were writing websites in the 90s you should know this.
Yes, just like you’re free to never visit an annoying website asking to spam notifications you’re free to take away Apple’s decision making power you grant them by simply not buying an iphone.
> you’re free to take away Apple’s decision making power you grant them by simply not buying an iphone.
That's a very common argument
But it doesn't get any less stupid with time.
I never owned an iPhone.
Because I am an adult homo sapiens that can take decisions for himself.
But you should know that if a standard exists, and the standard has been approved by a consortium, a consortium where Apple is a very important member, they should at least support what they signed for, instead of forcing developers to go through hoops just to support their platform.
When Elon Musk make Teslas he has to put airbags in them, stop lights, front lights, safety belts, they must pass crash tests, because that's the standard, otherwise he couldn't sell them as cars.
So if Apple believe that the standard that they approved is too dangerous, they can make their OS more secure, instead of putting the blame on developers.
Developers are not jumping through hoops to support their platform. I’m a full stack dev, I understand what it takes to support safari and a majority of the time is actually Chrome being fast and loose with the standard, not Apple. Is it a partial implementation, sure. But the features lacking don’t stop meaningful work at all. Just like hearing my statement is old, so is yours.