While Intel is indeed losing the performance game, even with the shady management engine shenanigans intel CPUs are still much more open than the locked down proprietary nightmare that apparently are the new Apple ARM SoCs.
And it's a poor analogy because driver licensing is almost a straight consequence of how dangerous cars are, but the openness of an SoC does not directly follow from how fast it is.
Hence why laptops and 2-1 hybrids are basically back to the days of vertical integration of 16 bit computers, whose the PC was the only exception.
Not really, PC laptops and hybrids are pretty standardized. A slim case doesn't really make it vertical integration.
It is getting more and more integrated though which makes it hard to replace parts. But that has more to do with greed and size requirements than vertical integration, a soldering iron can amend some of that. Driver situation isn't by any means something new or necessarily an indication of vertical integration either.
As for the rest, nothing that regular consumers would ever bother with.
We are talking about vertical integration are we not? Don't see how any of that is relevant then.
And since you did your research the wider public would appreciate to learn in what consumer shop one can get such out of the box experience.
The DMV is a revenue source for most states. Same with traffic cops. They both only have a tenuous link to traffic safety.
1. Power efficiency (read: battery life) 2. Performance 3. Openness
99% of consumers only care about 2 of those. The more that time goes on, the more it becomes clear that prioritizing openness, in particular for hardware, is a direct trade-off against building a great consumer product.