One of the hardest problems you can face is getting a community of disparate developers to do the right thing at scale; sometimes the easiest solution for that is a monolithic integrated blob.
It's really easy for Apple to back themselves into a vulnerable corner with the "ecosystem" mentality drawn out to it's logical extremes. I'd argue it's our democratic duty to stop businesses from endangering their customers like that, but that really depends on how you feel about consumer protections.