> In their defense—both Apple's, and the public's—the general populace is, like, 99.99% OK
Majority of customers purchase one of two options in a duopoly isn’t really an endorsement of the options, but rather a critique on the lack of options.
Nonsense. At various points during iPhone's lifetime, customers had the ability to choose Windows Phone, Nokia, Symbian, Blackberry. People who wanted cheap or hackable phones went with Android, everyone else bought iPhones. Just like today!
Other operating systems were available in the past, and you can release a RISC-V Lisp OS phone incompatible with everything else tomorrow if you want. Just like in the past.
… however, the market decided years ago it didn't want to support a multitude of choices, when all other viable options went belly-up, or currently fail to get traction … or, to be fair, can't compete with the giant marketing machines of the remaining parties.
Majority of customers purchase one of two options in a duopoly isn’t really an endorsement of the options, but rather a critique on the lack of options.