But you had other smartphone options, and you chose to buy Apple's solution. In making that choice, you were not just buying a piece of general-purpose hand-held computing hardware, you were buying into to a specific, explicitly-curated ecosystem of software and services. Apple's gatekeeping role here was a significant part of the iPhone's value proposition. If that's not what you want, or if you think it is overpriced, why would you choose to buy it? Other devices are available.

(As someone who doesn't use either an iPhone or an Android phone, I don't really have a dog in this fight. Just an observer trying to see various points of view.)