> Instead of monetizing users by selling their data (facebook / google etc) they simple charge high actual fees.
The amount of money companies get from selling data is equivalent to low fees. Like low enough that the main reason it's advertising is that collecting amounts of money that low end up dominated by processing fees and cognitive friction.
> The idea that apple is a monopoly is laughable if you like at any historic definition of a monopoly.
Have you actually looked at any historic definition of a market power? "Market with only two players" meets pretty much all of them, to say nothing of the fact that the market for iOS and Android apps are different because they have almost entirely non-overlapping sets of customers.
The existence of geographic monopolies is not controversial, but customers can cross the border to buy from a competitor - the barrier that prevents competition is the cost of travel.
So why is it hard to understand that cost of leaving the Apple ecosystem creates a barrier that effectively makes the Apple App Store a monopoly for the distribution of iOS apps?
The existence of alternatives on another platform doesn't help customers who can't afford the costs of switching or (worse) owning multiple platforms.
For some reason this is seen as terrible. The idea that apple is a monopoly is laughable if you like at any historic definition of a monopoly.