Me as a consumer:

- Companies forking over more margin and control to Apple mean they have to make up for it in other ways.

- Apple and Google wielding so much control removes overall choice and competition from the market.

- I sure hope Apple and Google only ever have my interests at heart because they have all the keys to the kingdom and could really screw me over.

- I wish I could do XYZ with my phone. Too bad...

- I wish there were more diverse phone SKUs. It used to be wildly competitive and we used to have all kinds of innovation because it wasn't so winner-take-all. Where's my eink low power open source phone with gpio and thermal sensors, etc.

- My car and phone feel like frenemies.

- There's still no good alternative OS for phones. Probably because it'd be impossible to make money and compete against titans.

- The company that removed manifest V2 is now forcing app signing? I wonder if they'll limit web browsing options and ad blocking soon.

- Why do I have to de-Google my phone with every update? They have tyranny of defaults (that lay people can't adjust) and just reset the defaults back to themselves every time you upgrade. Or give you scare walls and alerts asking to be default again. Lay people are probably stuck with this.

- "Google News" legitimately has half page ads and popups and that's the default experience. It is physically impossible to even read the news.

Those views are "you as a developer." Very few actual end users think about or care about any of these things.

Very few actual care about Apple controlling the apps you install as well. And even fewer understand what “OS API access” mean.

Just because consumers are unaware that a problem exist doesn't mean they wouldn't care if they knew.

The consumer can't articulate policy.

Consumers in a general sense don't know much of how the world works - safe radiation exposure, food safety, drug dosing thermodynamics, household electrical wiring, airborne particulate, airline maintenance...

This is why we have a government regulatory regime to protect them. The government has to strong arm companies out of bad behavior, because consumers do not understand.

Some people who have Apple and Google stock will voice opinion against regulation. Or people who really love their devices and don't understand the harms.

But the fact is that this Titanic command of markets damages the robustness of the economy. Google and Apple are doing massive harm.

Capitalism should be hard. It should be a treadmill. You shouldn't be able to coast.

We like the market. We like evolutionary pressure. Giants this large, however, are an ecological hack that get to escape the same algorithm we subject every other company to. They created an artificial and illegal means to prevent themselves from facing competition. They're an invasive species picking on ecosystems that literally cannot fight back.

It's a good thing that new companies can (or could) threaten old companies. It's a renewing forest fire, a de-ossification. It rewards innovation capital rather than institutions.

Apple and Google have found a way to forever avoid this by wedging themselves in as "owners of mobile computing". These two companies own it. Period. You don't. Consumers don't. No other company can even enter into the arena. You play by their rules.

Antitrust enforcement has never been more needed. We've had two decades of devices we really only rent and don't own. Devices that strangle consumer control over how we spend our time and money.

If America doesn't do it, foreign countries seeking sovereignty should.

As a consumer I definitely want my browsers to always be up to date and be able to address 0day bugs as soon as the browser vendors are aware. Any potential delays on fixing security issues make me nervous.