Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

I have this client, it's an Arkansas truck company that is hauling cargo all over US. So a few years ago they decided to ease the way, and also double check on their drivers, of how cargo is delivered. To optimize routes (fuel economy), to make it easier for drivers to enter/use data in the system, stuff like that. So they decided to give them drivers work smartphones, GPS enabled always with location reported through Google services. And a custom app that would use them features to run on said smartphone which would connect back to their server and interact with the central DB there. Server on AWS, back-end there, client app on smartphone - classic programming job, OK? So they hire a developer who was just like you "if it can be a web app then should be a web app" that caught their eyes with "look how nice works on any device or any operating system since is a web app" kind of argument. Job done, and they started to use the new system. In the beginning everything went fine, then client wanted more features. Add reports, add logging errors, add more contracts in the system that drivers show/sign with their cargo clients, notification if a nearby new customer pop-ed up in the system so the truck driver takes a little detour - stuff like that. And of course the aforementioned web developer delivered. Implemented all them features over the course of next couple years.

And then problems started to creep-up. More and more features, means more and more power was drawn from the phone battery. Have you ever seen a company that seek to reduce their operating costs give expensive with long battery life smartphones to their employees? Because I never seen one. So them phones had to be plugged into charges more often, battery cycle was shorter, also plenty of batteries don't like to be charged on short many cycles throughout the day or otherwise they start to swell, best case scenario, or to even explode (worst case scenario). So the company started to experience problems with smartphones, their drivers complained a lot about how when the smartphone was hot after charging the app was sometime unresponsive so they had to wait for the phone 5 minutes to coll off, time which added to their operational costs. Tell me, how do you think truck drivers are? University graduates who have a lot of tech understanding or simple folks trying to make a buck for their family and are tech illiterate? Because in my experience they are 99% of the time the latter rather than former.

What was "mission critical" (as you like to mock it)? Get an app running on an inexpensive phone, used by tech illiterate humans that definitely will use it wrong, to lower the company costs without hiccups!! Did the web app achieved that? Absolutely not, made it worse actually.

My solution? Get rid of GPS crap from smartphone, move that as a microservice running on a Raspberry Pi, which also had attached a LoRa module, phone would connect to RPi's access point only. RPi would also have a GSM dongle to connect to internet and always stay in the truck's cabin plugged in. Let's see running costs. RPi is 15 USD, LoRa is 5 USD, GSM dongle another 10 USD. Total cost for the rest of their life a grand total of 30 USD. Do you know how much is a battery replacement? Average of 40 USD, if you manage to find the battery model, otherwise you need to replace the entire phone. So which one is better? 40 USD every 6 months or 30 USD one time payment? Now multiply that with 300 trucks.

I made all of them native apps as native apps are also draining less battery, turned off all Google location services, GPS, notifications services and implemented my notification service instead, pushed from RPi's local server to phone's app. Back to charge the phone only once per day.

Funny thing. As a side effect of my implementation they made a bunch of their clients happy. See some of them are mining operations, and sometime the boss of the mining operation was inside the mine. Before they had to exit the mine to check stuff on the truck driver phone and make the do paperwork. Now LoRa module allowed the phone to have signal even inside if they parked their truck at the mine's mouth. Before that the phone would lose internet connectivity 20 feet inside the mine.

How?

What do you even define as """innovation"""?

Honest question, I'd love to see some actual answers here instead of the usual canned hyperbole.

So far Apple's users are mostly satisfied with them, happily voting with their wallets, and the only people complaining about Apple are mostly the developers and companies who want unfettered access to iOS' users, and I haven't heard any good reasons from them other than "we want to maximize our own profits."