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> a system wide ad blocker would seem pretty anti-competitive.

Only to advertisement agencies. And they can go cry up a river.

You make it sound like Apple doesn't have a search and mobile advertising arm.

https://searchads.apple.com/

Asking the user yes/no on first start would be easy. Then it’s opt-in.

They stopped tracking by default in safari which is similar.

By your same logic, a secure operating system would be anti-competitive against malware authors, gas and/or electric heating would be anti-competitive against chimney sweeps, and electric cards would be anti-competitive against oil companies.

How so? Apple isn't in the ad business, are they?

Now if Google were to do something like add a default adblocker that blocked all non-Google ads... yeah, that'd be anti-competitive.

But if Apple isn't even competing, how can it be anti-competitive?

I know Apple used to have an ad network, I don't know if it's still running.

iAd is still alive in Apple products, but it’s not an ad network anymore.

https://developer.apple.com/support/iad/

Did I miss some other product?