They and Google have a duopoly on smartphone operating systems. Both use anti-competitive tactics to maintain the duopoly.
Anti-trust law probably needs to be updated to take platforms into account. In the past (pre-software), the first sale doctrine provided a decent check valve on this sort of crap.
It was the idea that, if you sold a thing to a person, then you no longer owned it. I think the "first-" part of the name is there because anti-resale provisions were commonly tacked onto an agreement between the manufacturer and initial purchaser.
For instance, a tractor manufacturer would put a trademarked logo on a copyrighted picture on the side of a patented gear box, and then, as part of the condition of the sale to the farmer, they'd say the trademark, copyright and patent licenses were non-transferrable.
The courts correctly ruled that this was bullshit, and banned it. We need to go back to something like that. Then (since the DMCA would be ruled unenforceable, and things like the CFAA would apply to device manufacturers), you'd be able to modify your phone, and the manufacturer would not be allowed to retaliate.
At that point, Google and Apple's duopoly would give them a lot less market power. For one thing, once Google "sold" android to phone manufacturers, they couldn't use contracts to prevent the manufacturers from making a mozilla phone, etc, like they do today. Similarly, iPhone parts couldn't contain mechanisms preventing their use in other devices, because hardware DRM would not only be unprotected by the DMCA, but flat-out illegal.
