The "why is this not being discussed as an anti-trust violation like Microsoft was hit with" is because the US government of the last 10-15 years doesn't have the same viewpoints on anti-trust that they did 20+ years ago.
The US government went after MS multiple times. Most were over anti-competitive contracts. But the list includes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... Which definitely did go after MS over bundling IE.
The penalties that Microsoft suffered under from the USA were sufficiently weak that they considered it a cost of doing business. It was only the much larger EU penalties that caused them to change course. But the USA definitely went after them for bundling IE.
The Nintendo NES came out in 1983. Didn't they have control of all apps allowed to run on their machine? They weren't charged with anti-trust violations.
They didn't.
The security of the consoles from that era was based on trademarks. The hardware would refuse to execute software unless it could find the manufacturer's name at some predefined memory location. Since these were trademarks, game companies had to obtain permission in order to use them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
The judges ruled that people had every right to reverse engineer existing games and produce compatible software for those consoles regardless of the manufacturer's wishes. The trademark violations were the manufacturer's fault since they made it necessary for games to work.
The world was a much better place before the DMCA.
The comparison breaks down somewhat though when you consider the size of the NES market (61.91 million units sold) vs. smartphones (1 billion+ sold). Nintendo, and the whole gaming market, may have just been too small for the justice department to pursue anti-trust charges.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System#...
Duopolies seem to be a natural state
Unfortunately, the vetting process has issues and I think even though the quality will improve over time due to more/better usage of ML/AI techniques but that will make the process more opaque.
Most smartphone apps seem like a way for a bank to wedge themselves between you and what you want to do.