Apple is generally on the side of customers, but this is a clear example of how anti-customer-friendly their policy was. As a customer, I had to jump through hoops to buy a book on their premium platform.
Apple maps, "Intelligence", siri, etc all run on device because Apple is in the market of selling devices. As many as they can. Whereas google is in the market of selling you to advertisers.
It's literally a major difference in their fundamental business models.
Apple does both. Under Tim Cook, services have become nearly as profitable as hardware, and the price of making services compared to hardware is comically low. That's why we have AppleTV and Apple News and Apple Arcade, for all they're worth as a motley crew of subscriptions.
I've never had to buy a service plan for any of my PC laptops.
OTOH, every Apple owner I know has an AppleCare plan. And has had to use it. Multiple times. For nearly every device they own. And this is a sample population of over a thousand over more than a decade.
Yes, Apple service is great. I couldn't tell you what Dell Service is like, or Lenovo, or HP, because I've never had to use them. PC laptops and Android phones...just work.
And given that Androids are more popular in the parts of the world where reliability is essential, it's pretty clear that most of the world agrees that Apples are the inferior device.
Good luck trying to paint the picture that AppleCare is a waste of money. I've owned hundreds of Apple products since AppleCare became a thing. I've "had to use it" once, and that one use replaced a $4500 product for $0. The ROI on AppleCare always works out.
If you've had AppleCare since it became a thing, you've basically paid the same price for AppleCare over that time as it would have cost to replace the $4500 product on its own.
Android devices and PC laptops don't need service plans. But as you've demonstrated, Apple products do. Even the $4500 ones.
I guess this is a side-effect where, as things stood, developers were incentivized to just forgo IAP and force users to jump through hoops to find how to give them money; and that in turn wasn’t customer friendly. But in general I much prefer IAP to whatever payment system the developer uses. It makes it so easy to do things like change or cancel any payments I have.
In general I think centralized stores are customer friendly but anti developer. As a less controversial example, see how many gamers will wait months or years for a game to leave the Epic game store and go on Steam.
Centralized stores are only superficially consumer friendly. The store owner is too well positioned to rent seek, and they will inevitably do so -- as Apple in fact is.
I'm not convinced;
Planned obsolescence, repair issues, phone-home privacy issues, vendor lock-in, etc
Apple is certainly innovative which helps consumers, but that's about it. The rest is bare minimum for the price point.