The entire thing is a shit storm, every player seems to be against the end user (that is paying for everything, go figure). There's a protection racket on the form of patent rights enabling the shit to go on, but it can not reasonably survive on this shape for very long.
Valid point, but the apps may just be refusing because most phones don't have an SD card anymore, and the authors are either being lazy or don't care (I don't know which) and simply failing to code in support for something they think seldom exists anywhere.
Although in my case, all my apps that I care about using the SD card are using the SD card. But then again I have 98% FDroid apps installed, so those may just be better behaved apps.