Thank you for being flawed enough that you failed to stop Android taking over the phone market, and thereby preventing the world from entering a technology dark ages where hardware and software ecosystems are locked down and controlled by huge corporations.
On the other hand, iPhone OS (or how was it called in early days) was a clear inspiration for Android. You cannot deny Apple basically invented many phone UI metaphors, that were directly copied (and I don't mean it in negative sense) into Android UI. And to your other point... closed nature has its upsides too. Look at gaming consoles, they work quite well despite being crazy controlled. And Apple never wanted to do…
It is precisely because it was so good that it was such a threat to the technology landscape. We could easily have descended into a windows like era of domination by one company, but this time with the company having complete control over every layer - hardware, software, even content. However we didn't, partly thanks to strategic mistakes that Jobs made (we could have a whole discussion about what those were but I think it would be counterproductive wrt this thread).
I think almost like a natural ecosystem the software world needs both open and closed systems in balance. Each one moves us forward in different ways at different times. It is when they get out of balance that we get stuck (the "windows" era being a good example).