> Apple's attitude has always been condescending. Forcing users to fit the product, instead of the other way around

It's funny because having actually worked at Apple this isn't the case at all. They do a lot of product market research and PMs always read Radar, Feedback Reporter etc. Look at the recent pivots on keyboard, TouchBar, MagSafe, SD card etc.

It's more that people such as yourself are being condescending by assuming that your view of the world is the right one and everyone else is wrong.

In this case you assume that people (a) don't trust that Apple always shows the indicator light when the camera is on and (b) are willing to accept a thicker device for this feature.

But people are still using Apple products and seems fine with the totalitarian approach. Perhaps they care more about delivering values to the general customers, e.g. no physical cover for slightly smaller form factor? (if this is the constraint against having a physical cover)

Perhaps it's just me, I wonder why would people say that they love open-source while using devices with such a closed ecosystem, using various approaches to make it incompatible other things.

That may be the case for geeks like us. We’re not Apple’s core customer though. For the vast majority of them, Apple does indeed know better. The iPhone is proof of that.

And now that most buttons are controlled by software anyway, where’s the difference to a “physical” button? Better to have a hard-wired camera light that you cannot bypass.

Apart from that, not having to choose often feels more liberating than restricting. You’re almost guaranteed to be overwhelmed by options and feel stupid afterwards, no matter what you chose, because there is always a better choice to be made. Ever detailed a new car? It’s paralyzing. Base models are simply base templates. Options creep in. If you allow several, intransparent dependencies appear, frustrate you and soon you expect everything to be completely modular.

Better to have a small number of pre-defined, comprehensive packages.