> I don’t use spotify so I can’t speak for their platform but don’t they charge outside of Apples ecosystem
My point is that platforms cannot simply make their own phone/ecosystem to avoid clearly abusive behavior. Smartphones are already so much harder to make compared to 10/20 years ago, imagine in 50.
> No they are not. They are a convenience. People can and will continue to live without them if necessary. Even in modern society. Go a week without your smartphone before you say things like this.
Until you try to enter a restaurant where you have to scan a QR code, or when the government decide to track you using an APP because of a certain epidemic. Or when communicating become a struggle because all your contacts are using X third-party chatting service.
Sure, you can still call it a convenience (just ask the person next to you to scan the code, prints paper everyday or do whatever tedious task is the alternative, find new friends or force them to adapt to you) but it is not reasonable. At that point I could say that a house/place to live is only a convenience you could very well survive in a forest. And I doubt that our dependence on smartphone is doing to slow down any time soon.
A real convenience would be a dish-washer, I wouldn't care what horrible things the clear monopoly is doing as I could easily buy another brand without affecting anything in my life. This is not the case with a smartphone, companies are clearly encouraged/forced (there are exceptions) to support as many platforms as they can, hence why electron exist. And you can imagine that social media/chatting service cannot really afford to ignore half the world.