The point is, nobody is disallowed from competing with Apple and its ecosystem on its merits. If Apple didn't provide enough value in return to what they ask, they would fail. Signaling that you will punish success with force means that the next Apple will be a lot more cautious about how they do things. Jacked up prices (as long as value proposition is there, people will pay, they will just pay more), requiring dev kits (can you force a company to change their hardware design so that it can be developed on? where is the limit?) / expensive partnership agreements / increasing the barrier to entry... Unless companies are "state owned" they have infinite ways to keep their profits at the expense of consumers. Apple's existing deal was a good deal - it was working, competition was (and is still) there. Now they will have to do the things that will just inconvenience users as a side effect, which is what they don't want to do, but they will be forced to do regardless.