The point is that iPhone users are locked into (or strongly penalized for not using) Apple services like Apple wallet and storage and other apple devices like apple watches or earbuds, rather than competing openly. My partner has an iPhone and the hoops we have to jump through to get some–not all–google photos, Fitbit, and Klipsch headphones features working is mindboggling. Apple watches also straight up wouldn’t work without another apple devices to phone home to last I checked. That’s the anticompetitive lawsuit
“We need you to stop making a good product forcing your customers to only use your version so your customers can finally move away from it.”
Fixed it. Non-apple watches, for instance, can’t use GPS from an iPhone or cause it to emit sound to local lost phones, despite being previously able to, demonstrating no technical limitations just a walled-garden limitation
As I understood it, VPNs don’t work in this threat model because it’s essentially routing traffic through a compromised router before it ever reaches the VPN, so the VPN acts normally but there’s a snooper before you ever connect to it