As both a developer and a user, a lot of the software "freedoms" we have are superfluous, duplicative, and inefficient. As technology becomes more and more commoditized and 50,000 vendors all sell roughly the same thing, decision fatigue sets in. The walled gardens provide value not because they remove freedom but because they give you back something most people value more: time.

We don't all have time to sit around evaluating 1,000 similar packages, compiling and debugging them from scratch, just to get a simple app or game working.

The bleeding edge will keep on bleeding, but for the rest of us, good enough is good enough. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to work well enough and not add to our already-overwhelmed mental loads.

Well I’m a user and I don’t want to have to make that choice. For example I’m not a big fan of Facebook, but I do use it occasionally to keep in contact with some friends.

Suppose Facebook decided to move to a different third party store on iOS, maybe their own store, so they don’t have to list their data access and sharing policies, don’t have to go through app store review, etc.

Doing that forces me to choose between rigorous app review and disclosure, and using the Facebook app. I don’t want to be put in that position. One of the reasons I use an iPhone is because of that.

Regardless of whether you have the responsibility to make that choice or not, you are still responsible for dealing with the consequences of whatever choice has been made for you.

How is that any better that being responsible for making the choice in the first place?