Stop buying the darn product then? You know it's been known for a long time this is not an area Apple caters to. They shouldn't have to when there are so many others that do cater to that. They want to make the whole widget. Let them. If they are not good at it, they will fail and go away. Someone else will buy up the patents and trademarks and whatever is left over and rebuild it so that it is more of what you say. But, I personally doubt that will happen. As there are enough people out there that like it as is.
Stop suggesting people stop buying the product how about that? Why changing stance on those pet peeves so hard? The Apple way has been proven wrong several times and Apple was forced to walk back, be it Safari design or calling screen change. Apple believes they are the right 100% of the time, which will certainly not happen. Unfortunately, there is no prospect of Apple collapsing and being sold to a third party, at least not in my lifetime anyways.
This isn't a failure to understand. The point you are making just is not correct. This is a minority of users that want this feature. Whatever they want to use it for is almost irrelevant as it has to do with cost. Should Apple spend time and money to cater to (Potentially) 5% of the market? Should they punch holes into iOS and iPhone so that 5% can do whatever they want? OR, just follow me here. OR, should Apple cater to what IS actually working best for the lion share of customers? Not that there are not any companies out there that don't cater to a wickedly small share of customers for whatever goods and services they may offer. But, those tend to be just as wickedly expensive to purchase. Because it is such a small % of those that shop for said item. I and many others would rather Apple do what they are doing the way they are doing it. It works for the majority. For those that fall along the side of not enough to too much, well as the old saying goes. You can't please everyone all the time. Face the fact that you want something Apple doesn't offer and move on. You certainly can ask, or suggest or wish or whatever for it. Heck, you can even hack the device/iOS yourself and do with it as you please if you're able. Apple shouldn't have to make that easy for you to do. And they should protect their product so that someone or some nefarious groups don't break into my device.
Just because a small group of user speaks the loudest doesn’t make it a minority market. Besides, there is no shortage of users writing long complain threads about Apple devices and software issues. Some even clearly state they will leave or have left the platform. Most People outside of such forums would not even bother to complain publicly id guess, due to various factors, even if they have issues. Just because we don’t have pages of headlines complaining about Apple on a daily basis doesn’t mean everyone are happy about Apple devices except those who choose to complain.
You are talking about cost. At what cost? Just in MacRumors more than a couple dozen people have called for a QoL release rather than pumping out buggy new features YOY and refuse to address issues before moving to the next year. Sure, I think Apple customers are mostly well-educated and do have higher tolerance than Android folks. But that doesn’t mean people can tolerate forever. There is a reason why Apple so fiercely protect user data from third parties because those people generates lots of revenue for Apple. One person leaving Apple is one person moving to somewhere else, bringing their wealth to other parties. Unfortunately, Apple certainly can yolo as long as they like, and keep not listening to user feedback, and still working out fine. I guess it’s their privilege.
Like I said above. You can't please everyone all the time. If you personally ran Apple the way you want them to function. You might very well find your company failing. I can prove it by pointing you and anyone else to the current share price and market value of Apple for the past, I don't know 10+ years. Clearly they are doing this correctly. Maybe not for Europeans. But, globally it's working out pretty well.
How about this point to chew on. Apple's Mac platform since moving to intel (and before M1) has never been more open. During that time you could almost do whatever you wanted. EVEN run Windows OS native. You "could" even put in an assortment of GPU's, anyones RAM and or Storage. You "Could" even update the CPU on some models. The OS is WIDE open to do with as you wish.
Did ANY of that increase Apple's market penetration to any meaningful levels above G3/4/5 based Macs?
OR, again stay with me. OR was it the iPhone, iPad, and its closed iOS/iPadOS that drove them to higher and higher levels?
This isn't about an unwillingness to do "everything" you and a few others want. It's about reality. It simply is not worth it, it comes with risks. There are too few customers that actually want it and will pay for it. And more importantly. There is already an alternative that offers all of that at prices Apple will not compete with. If you and others don't "like" it. I'll be the first to say "sorry" with a "but" it's not that bad. You can buy an iPhone SE for all your Apple based needs. And any Android phone to take care of all your tinkering. Or you can spend some time hacking an iPhone to make it do what you want. And if you live in the EU, just wait a year or less and get exactly what you're asking for.
Share price is only one metric in evaluating how successful a company is. Maybe in today’s Apple that’s literally the only relevant metric, but I’ll put that aside.
You want to compare how Intel Mac era the platform was the most open it could ever been yet not carrying the bulk of marketshare and share prices to iPhone iPad being closed down yet insanely popular? At best I can say closed system does have its own appeal but far from the major driving force of iPhone iPad success. I can understand “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but I don’t understand the stubbornness in adapting to growing trend of customer wanting iPhone iPad to do more, and not Apple’s version of more. iPadOS still hugely lacklustre in its flexibility to adapt to a wide range of applications despite years of repeated call to open it up. And to this day, it’s still a glorified iOS. Apple doesn’t listen, and continue to deliver iPadOS in its lacklustre form, and sales of iPad reflects that.
What EU fundamentally doing is giving the entire Apple customer base the ultimate right to run Apple devices their own way, rather than only the Apple way. EU wants to treat users as users, not a bunch of glorified toddlers who have no tech literacy of any sort like during 1970s. At the same time, there is nothing to stop Apple from delivering an experience exactly like it was before. Yes, there are vulnerable people that can benefit from a more locked down system, but they are also a small group of people. Are you saying us folks who want a bit more flexibility to use our Apple devices have to make ourselves dumber so those vulnerable can be protected, which isn’t even true anyway, judging by frequent news of people falling in scams regardless of which mobile platform they are in?
You say catering to us 5% (which cannot be tallied in any meaningful manner mind you) would cost Apple a lot. Then what’s the cost of catering to those 5% vulnerable people? But at the same time, also create glaring holes in device and account safety so those 5% has higher chance to lose their data and device? (Cough, 4/6-digit passcode to reset Apple ID password, cough) That doesn’t seem to add up to me.
