I mean, there’s a point to be made about how much monopoly power Apple holds, and it’s now clear these questions weren’t asked until now because lawmakers were really sweet on the maker of their shiny iPhone - but this letter ain’t it. The author is grovelling to the point of it being honestly pitiful. The amount of derogatory references to the web and Android also make it really hard for me not to question the motiv…
> To the authors point - yes, Apple can change it’s policies whenever it likes, and can use those policies to kill other companies it views as competing with it’s own interests.
And in a world without antitrust regulation, a monopoly or cartel can use its market power to make massive profits and squash any and all competitors. Your "lesson" is one that takes the status quo as a given (in this case, the anti-competitive power of platforms), even when that status quo should be changed.
It's also far too extreme to be reasonable, since practically every small to medium business that depends on non-commodity inputs fails the test (for instance, pretty much every consumer software company, ever). I think the real lesson is that no business is every truly independent of others, and the platforms have discovered new classes of anti-competitive control that need to be legislated against.