What would you rather be the case then? Let's say Apple don't restrict what you can do on your device, what does that look like? What do you think Apple should do differently, specifically?
In my opinion, Apple's original sin with iOS was banning side-loading. Many of the specific things they've done that I would call evil, for example:
- squashing alternatives to built-in iOS apps
- the attempt to ban iOS development in non-Apple-approved languages
- the in-app purchase nonsense [apparently designed to prop up iBooks, among other things])
are only possible in the first place because of the side-loading ban. Making that one change (without changing the APIs, the App Store, approval policies, etc.) would go a long way towards fixing the aspects of the iOS platform that are problematic from the perspective of user freedom.
