And this is exactly the problem. Apple presents many of their users with bad choices: either buy an Apple Watch and suffer from its downsides, or switch to Android, and suffer in other ways. Or stick with the iPhone, buy a third-party smartwatch, and suffer from and unnecessarily-crippled user experience.

There's no technical reason it needs to be this way. Apple just prefers to be anti-competitive and increase their profits, than to give their users the as-close-to-ideal experience they want.