Choice is great, my argument wasn't that choice is bad because that's silly. My argument was saying that a feature that a lot of people have no use for is a really big negative against a platform is an incredibly bad point. It's a feature that has inherent personal usefulness for the user, if there's a strong majority that don't have need of that then it's not a negative against a platform when it's functionality for functionality sake.
But the iPhone isn't just lacking in one or two options. It's a very locked down platform in several ways. I have a hard time applying your argument of "a lot of people have no use" when it comes to something as fundamental as being allowed to run an app or browser that Apple does not like.
Okay so here's choice. You can have chocolate or steak, what you can't expect is that the steak is made of chocolate. There's choice. Apple has presented a product with specific guidelines and won't budge, your choice is "Does this product do everything I want it do/or nearly everything" if the iPhone fits that then that's a fine choice, if it doesn't then you can go choose something else.
It's Apple's party, and they'll approve if they want to. They just don't, because they don't think it's what the majority of their customer base wants.
But now the game has changed from "most people don't need this" to "if you bought Apple you get Apple".
The latter does not deflect the original criticism thrown at Apple here, they are overly restrictive to the point where it's bad for their users.
I think that is a valid point to raise against Apple without meeting a blanket "You bought their product and that's just how they roll". Under that, no company can be criticized for anything, ever.
