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None of that explains why the owner of an Apple device can't install alternative app stores, nor the bundling of their own app store.

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Apple never claimed to be an open ecosystem that allowed users to install anything they liked without interference.

Sure, I acknowledge an open ecosystem is at least not something Apple advertises nor what any reasonable consumer believes Apple to be advertising.

My point is that "users installing anything they like" is, or ought to be, a legal right. It's an intrinsic part of ownership of a general-purpose personal computing device.

Actually, from 2007 (first iPhone) to 2008 (the App Store), they kind of did.

Apple made it perfectly clear that iDevices would be a walled garden when they released the SDK for third party applications.

That’s retconning at its best - there was no support for 3rd party apps then, just websites.

That's the point, in the beginning there were not supposed to be native apps, just web apps, some of them advertised in Apple site but not otherwise privileged.

The point is that customers who bought an iDevice knew in advance that they were buying into a walled garden ecosystem with a web browser.

It was Google that lied to the public about Android being an "open" ecosystem that allowed you to do anything you liked without interference.

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