That’s interesting, but it’s hardly what I was imagining based on what the user I replied to was saying.

The source linked quoted an Apple exec explaining that the cost/benefit analysis of building a piece of free software on a platform that generates them no revenue doesn’t justify them spending the resources to build the software.

I get it, we all want corporations to be benevolent entities that give us free software out of the kindness of their hearts, but if we’re going to criticize one of them for not doing so, I think it’s more clear-minded to criticize the system as a whole.

Why in the world would anyone expect Apple to spend development resources building iMessage for Android (for free), especially if they’ve determined that it will hurt user retention? Because we want them to? It sucks, but not like “evil mega-corp manipulating users” sucks, more like “corporation making decision that literally every other for-profit corporation would make in that situation” sucks.

I’m not trying to morally justify it, I’m strictly speaking in the context of “use products from x instead of y because y did bad thing”. In that context, that’s a bad argument if it’s true that x is just as anti-user as y is.

And if we’re specifically talking about using Apple products vs using Google products here, you’d have to be taking crazy pills to think that Apple is more anti-user than a company who’s entire business model is the commoditization of vast amounts of personal data gathered for the purpose of more effectively manipulating literally everyone, including non-users of their products, into increasing their consumption.