At the same time (as an example) I have something like 150 movies I've bought on iTunes that I cannot bring to any other platform.
So Apple locks-in users to their platform (as is everyone else) then they are using the control they have over their user base to lock out competition.
This is the very definition of anti-competitive behavior.
And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with anti-competitive behavior.
If there was then patents, copyrights, trademarks, and fit of licensing, etc would all be wrong to the same degree.
Until a monopoly (or a collaborative effort by members of an oligopoly - in the case of price fixing) abuses these things we don’t care - and rightly so.
Plus, when it comes to media like movies, you really should complain about the movie studios & their licensing. That’s why Apple locks down videos - they have to or they wouldn’t be able to offer the content. You can see their free & easily shareable approach to music purchasing as a counter example to movies.
Patents, copyrights, trademarks etc all keep competition from from benefiting from your hard work (or stealing it) to give first to market a true advantage. This is not anti-competitive but rather things built into the system to reward investments in innovation.
If Apple had an open platform then they'd be required to compete on quality and services. Instead they lock-in users and lock-out competing services from even being able to exist in their platform. This is anti-competitive.
Note that I say this as a user with a MBP, iPhones, AppleTV, iPad, etc... I admit I would probably be fine switching to Android (for example) if I felt the quality of the platform was better without fear of not having access to other services (but IMO the quality isn't there).
Apple leverages its control of the platform to give Apple services an advantage over the competition. If Apple is not careful this will almost certainly end in anti-trust litigation.
> If there was then patents, copyrights, trademarks, and fit of licensing, etc would all be wrong to the same degree.
Patents and copyright exist novel and interesting works and ideas for a limited amount of time. It's an obvious argument that it would be anti-competitive to allow a giant competitor to steal novel ideas from their creators without recourse. It's not obvious to me how protecting serendipity is clearly anti-competitive.
Trademarks are in no way anti-competitive. They exist to support fair business practices, in particular to prevent malicious actors from falsely claiming they represent a business. It would be anti-competitive to allow anyone to steal your trademark and sell products under it.
Apple has been very clear that they would prefer to sell open formats, they managed to convince the music labels but not the video industry. So is your position that they should have refused to sell movies with those restrictions? If so, how do you reconcile that with you choosing to buy them?
Apple does not make their services available on anything other than Apple devices, nor do they allow other providers on their devices.
Regardless of an open format for the content, I cannot choose to use another service without also completely changing platforms, and if I change platforms I cannot use Apple's service.
On the first point again DRM is foisted on Apple against their preference. We’ve seen what an unholy mess multi-vendor DRM systems look like from the debacle that was “Play For Sure” with every vendor blaming all the others for nothing working properly. Can you really blame Apple for not wanting to wade blindly into a quagmire like that?
Secondly, you can absolutely use other services on Apple devices such as playing music bought from Amazon in the Amazon Music app, or using Pandora or Spotify. I use audible on my iPhone, and there's a perfectly usable kindle app. Apple Music works on Android, and you can transfer music bought in iTunes to any other device. Sure there are some limitations, there's no native iCloud client for Linux and it's support on Windows through iTunes is limited, but eh. There's a limit to what I think it's reasonable to expect them to do to make life more tolerable on other people's stuff.
So Apple locks-in users to their platform (as is everyone else) then they are using the control they have over their user base to lock out competition.
This is the very definition of anti-competitive behavior.