I want my UX to be intuitive and easy to use, but what If I want to customize my UI for my own experience?
There is nothing inappropriate about one vendor making choices. to continue the Apple example, they make 8 of the reasonably complete smartphones you could choose to buy. If you were forced to buy Apple's phone, that would be another matter, but you get to choose.
In the long term, yes - the customer decides, because it's the customer providing the money. Now, there's the whole "the customer is NOT always right, because the customer is often a clueless moron" problem, but ultimately, it's the customer's money to spend (or not spend).