The walled garden is one of Apple's strengths. I joined the ecosystem because there is a walled garden, not despite of it.
There is some anecdotal evidence that Apple is heavyhaded with their approval process but, for the most part, it's a success.
The parent-kid thing is a societal problem, not an Apple problem. Can hardly blame a company because the kids of their customers don't want to be inclusive (exclusivity is more than just what device you use).
The problem here is that the walled-garden approach is being used on communication services.
It's arbitrarily impossible to send text to/from Android with iMessage. It's arbitrarily impossible to use Facetime with anything other than iOS or OS X.
You may have found this walled garden to be a feature, but that doesn't mean every person you associate with does; yet you are likely imposing it upon them.
This problem is exasperated by the target market: People who want something that "just works" are generally going to be the most frustrated when they can't communicate across platforms; and most likely to blame it on everyone else, while refusing to solve the problem on their own end. Apple is taking advantage of this mentality, and abusing us all.
Apple is not abusing anyone (maybe their assembly workers, but even that is a stretch). They are providing a service and no one is forced to use it.
At the office, we use Slack and Webex for communication. With some friends, we use Skype and Messenger for video calls, with others it's FaceTime. No one is ostracized for having an Android. Not at work and certainly not in private.
> Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of an entity, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit.
I would say that their actions clearly fit that description.
They are abusing their customers by preventing them from using software outside their controlled ecosystem, and they are purposefully creating incompatible communication protocols in order to make everything around them effectively worse.
You could prevent others from using alternative systems by simply not collaborating with other players (for any one of a million reasons) and not building compatible software. It's not abuse, it's the belief that they don't need other parties to build great product.
There is some anecdotal evidence that Apple is heavyhaded with their approval process but, for the most part, it's a success.
The parent-kid thing is a societal problem, not an Apple problem. Can hardly blame a company because the kids of their customers don't want to be inclusive (exclusivity is more than just what device you use).