Plenty of choice... so long as that choice has been approved by Apple. It's a very convenient position for a company with a competing product.

Apple doesn't approve of me not having an Apple Watch.

What point are you making here? That Apple should be able to leverage their market position to crush their competition for a particular device just because it doesn't affect you in particular? You don't care for smart watches so the smart watch market should be exempt from regulation?

Exactly. They're just toys. I also don't care that my Nintendo GameCube can't use an Xbox controller.

Third-party controllers have been widely available for every popular video game console including the GameCube. Nothing was stopping anyone - Microsoft included - from creating an Xbox controller which would also work on the GameCube. Nintendo certainly didn't stop anyone.

This example completely misrepresents the issue. Nobody is asking Apple to add support for Pebble watches to their devices. They're asking Apple to stop preventing Pebble (and other smart watch manufacturers) from being able to support Apple devices.

Ok, then Microsoft put a famously large amount of effort into stopping people from installing other software on each version of Xbox. And Nintendo at least made it difficult to create unlicensed GameCube games.

Game consoles are not general purpose computing devices. People do not buy Xboxes with the expectation of running Photoshop. But people buy smartphones with the expectation of being able to use smartphone peripherals.

Nobody buys an iPhone expecting it to be an open device. You can't even sideload apps on it.

Really? Did you have to pair your Apple watch? Did Apple sign the software on the watch? Did Apple build special APIs and tools into iOS to support certain features of the Apple Watch?

Apple is demonstrating here that they can control every aspect of what you can do with your phone, including not allowing Pebble to work.

Apple doesn't even allow you to replace broken parts in your phone unless it has an Apple approved signature that can be validated.

I'm not sure what you mean, I don't have an Apple watch. Also idk what a Pebble is.

> Apple doesn't even allow you to replace broken parts in your phone unless it has an Apple approved signature that can be validated.

That's fine, I don't want to buy a used iPhone and find out it has random parts in it.

Honestly, if you don’t even know what Pebble is, and you don’t have a smartwatch, why are you even commenting on this topic?

I have an iPhone.

Yeah, and I have a microwave. Despite being vegetarian myself I don't complain that it has a button for "chicken" on it. I don't even really know what it does. I don't really care.