Probably to the same level of everything else they do - "We are doing what we want, so get on board if you are interested"
If that leads to lock-in, it's a happy accident.
If that leads to lock-in, it's a happy accident.
This usually works out well. I think the one big conflict is that Apple is also very diligent about it’s profit margins, and while this usually doesn’t conflict with “what’s best for the user,” where Apple gets in trouble is when it does.
One prominent example: there’s really no reason to think that the 5GB of free iCloud storage is sufficient anymore. Maintaining cloud storage isn’t free, so I understand why they don’t want to offer more than a “free trial” so to speak, but I would guess this hurts a lot of users who have a degraded user experience on their phone because they don’t have enough storage for iCloud backups, for example. It would make more sense to me if they would offer something like “system backups don’t count against your storage cap” and then include two years of iCloud 50GB with the purchase of the phone. That conflicts with the profit margins, though, so the 5GB teaser stays around.
However, by charging peanuts, you got the user into a subscription, which is the important bit. A person in a subscription who jumped the hurdle of not paying vs paying a little is much more likely to upgrade later.
It also plays into a Steve Jobs strategy, for better or worse. Many people don't hear about this, but Steve Jobs had a view that people don't value things that are free. He made the Cafe at Apple HQ subsidized but require payment, not that Apple couldn't afford it, but because he knew people wouldn't respect free food. This view of Apple's, that people don't value things they didn't pay for, seems to permeate many of their business decisions.
This would explain why their users are so quick to defend the 30% cut, with sunken cost taken into account.
Imagine if John Deere decided to switch all of their tractors to a proprietary gasoline formula, and said "We're doing what we want, so get on board if you're interested".
They would be sued before the sun went down.
That's more like what the current situation is.