>They could still do all this shit without the walled garden
With much slower adoption, pushback, and bike-shedding, like in the Microsoft and Linux world.
>To me, it suggests they aren't willing to compete.
Compete with what? With themselves? They compete with Windows (and to a degree Linux, though few care for that), and with Android. They'd compete with Windows Phone too if MS wasn't incompetent.
But they didn't do anything to preclude others from making their OS/hardware and selling it to customers. In fact, they have nowhere near a monopoly in either the desktop (10% or less) or the mobile space (40% or less).
Whereas MS for example, had 98% of the desktop (home and enterprise), and abused its power to threaten OEMs to do its bidding against Linux etc.
With much slower adoption, pushback, and bike-shedding, like in the Microsoft and Linux world.
>To me, it suggests they aren't willing to compete.
Compete with what? With themselves? They compete with Windows (and to a degree Linux, though few care for that), and with Android. They'd compete with Windows Phone too if MS wasn't incompetent.
But they didn't do anything to preclude others from making their OS/hardware and selling it to customers. In fact, they have nowhere near a monopoly in either the desktop (10% or less) or the mobile space (40% or less).
Whereas MS for example, had 98% of the desktop (home and enterprise), and abused its power to threaten OEMs to do its bidding against Linux etc.