Why is Apple included in that list? What service do they have that pretends to be "the Internet"?
Other wall-garden networks offered by Apple include: AirDrop, Find My, iMessage
Imagine if AOL had existed in an "always online" world and built an OS instead of an application. In fact, just imagine a computer that booted directly into AOL, where you could download and manage apps but never delete the "AOL" part.
Isn't Apple's iOS just an abstraction of the environment AOL sought to build - a portal they controlled in between customers and companies to allow and manage exclusive services, media, and (DRM'd) purchases?
Could everything he had felt for his iPhone have been a saccharine substitute for what he'd lost along with AOL, his empire built in search of his Rosebud? It had all seemed too familiar, once he stopped to think about it... but how did he miss it, all this time? The differences boiled down to mere organization!
"I was a fool, so blinded by the beauty of my garden that I failed to notice I was a prisoner of it. I wonder if my garden is merely one of many in a larger garden, and that garden, one of..."
"Ding." His buffalo style chicken Hot Pocket was done. After doomscrolling over his cuisine, he felt better - silly, even - for doubting the uniqueness of his iPhone. It had appeared from vacuum, after all, amidst a techless, empty waste of a world, and brought with it an era where even the past was altered in its wake.
An icon of an envelope, not a mailbox, wiggled. "Oh look, I've got mail."
Seriously, they are definitely doing just what you've described, but even more advanced. Not that I think it's intrinsically wrong. It's much more efficient to have protocols for all the modes of interaction that are discovered, e.g. The collection of raw ideas expressible via internet web pages is like a test bed for the possibilities. They eventually graduate into ossified structures under the control of Apple, like Messages reactions, gifs, replies etc. (Even HTML/FTP/etc and browsers are sandboxes with much more restrictions than arbitrary methods of drawing/sculpture/sound/dance and other types of art.)
But with power comes responsibility. I'm not even sure it's possible for a corporation to be accountable to the full extent necessary for such control over so many people's interactions. There're unimaginable quantities personal stuff on their servers and clients.
You're whining about FTP's malign effects on drawing, sculpture, and dance? Hahaha, seriously? And again, you neglect to establish that Apple is to blame.
How about the flourishing of art forms and appreciation for would-have-been-obscure artists (including sculptors and dancers) who have the means to reach millions of people through, OMG, HTTP! How about the fact that I can look up the best techniques and watch a video about how to construct my own kiln, so I can do pottery at home? Dear lord save us from what Apple hath wrought! If only my spirit could soar into the heavens without hitting my head on a server in the cloud.
Woe betide us.
Oh, and give yourself a participation trophy.
The AppStore and the PlayStore are slowly choking off the internet.
Apple is not a gatekeeper to the Internet the way Google, Meta, and Amazon are. Lumping Apple in with them reveals ignorance of their core businesses.
Yes, I find those publishers and apps annoying. But how big a deal have they become?
Also, part of it is a very long game. Younger generations rarely use websites, they mostly use apps.
It's the same thing as Office and Windows being slowly moved away towards a subscription model: done successfully for Office, still trending that way slowly for Windows, where resistance is SUPER fierce.
Just because the loss is happening over decades, doesn't mean the web is winning.
You should be happy that Reddit just trashed all the apps, then. It would never have occurred to me to look for an app to use Reddit; nor did I ever hear discussion about it.
It seems that people tend to use the same few key applications now: Instagram/TikTok/whatever-flavor-of-the-year-social-media app, messaging, the YouTube app, a browser.
But you're right, in that you do still get hounded to install pointless apps to do a single thing. The other day I needed to download some soccer tickets that were being hosted by TicketMaster. After the TicketMaster-hosted site told me to download them to my wallet but offered no way to do so, the team wanted me to install their own app. Nope.
Another thing that pisses me off is when vendors will make it impossible to do something from A COMPUTER. NO, I am not going to install a goddamned app and dick around on a tiny phone screen when I'm running an event and executing transactions with customers standing in line, Square!