What did Apple betray? Wasn’t it always a walled garden, enforcing things are done their way? If anything, it’s been moving more and more pro-privacy recently...
To be honest my reasons are: I really just think Tim Cook has little to no vision and all their products are showing the effects of "bozo explosion".
Any organization that doubles, triples, or quadruples in size winds up being a giant host to parasitic employees (middle manager bozos, usually), whose basic motive is (a) do little work, (b) get paid. The real world effects is the company stops being able to make decisions and continues to double-down on mistakes (removing headphone jacks to force consumers into buying your proprietary 'ear pods'). All those "one time tricks" to boost revenue eventually run out...ask Balmer.
Linux is a much much lower cost of entry - there's no grand vision expectation.
I've been an Android user since forever but I had to switch to iPhone X to dogfood my app. I "switched without switching" -- my photos are still saved to Google Photos, my contacts are synched with Google Contacts, etc.
I'm perfectly fine after the switch. All my mobile workflows are intact. When it's time to switch back to Android, I'm sure I'll be able to switch without any major problems (except for one thing -- I'll likely miss the build quality of iPhone X).
You're not paying for a future vision at all. That doesn't make any sense because they don't tell you what's coming in the future and actively try to prevent people from finding out.
There is certainly a duality to the walled garden paradigm - on the one hand, a very controlled environment presumably ensures quality and reliability, however it also creates an environment vulnerable to abuse, such as fixed pricing schemes. All Apple users have to accept the fact that they can’t upgrade their hardware, ever. And because Apple ultimately has control over all aspects to f their ecosystem, an OS upgrade can and often will hose your carefully configured rig. Like MS, Apple is not concerned with the hapiness of a particular segment of their user base; No, they care about pushing new features and fixing security vulnerabilities. They are just like any other big company that cares about their bottom line. I chose to accept this as the lesser of the two evils. Perhaps at some point in the future, a company will come along that actually cares about users.
Philosophyally, there is not much difference between Apple and MS, but Apple at the moment just happens to have an ecosystem that favors artists, while Linux is like the deadbeat dad that shows up once in a while. But blaming “Linux” for lack of artist support is also unfair because Linux is not a single entity.
I make my choices with eyes wide open. I may hate some aspects of my choices, but I am not forced into them.
1) If you use iMessage, you cannot switch out of it without losing access to any group messages you were in before. Any messages other iMessage users try to send you will simply be silently deleted. I believe this violates federal telecommunications law.
2) Apple prohibits selling virtual goods in iOS apps, unless you give them a 30% cut. I believe this is racketeering.
Obviously there is room for legal debate here, but I think these are anti-competitive choices Apple has made, which weren't present in iPhone 1.
They are able to continue to do these things because the vast majority of iPhone customers don't realize they are happening. But they maintain platform lock-in.