Apple has only one single carrier in the US, so how many carriers did they exactly change?. Did they start to sell unlocked GSM/CDMA phones to anyone who wanted?
As the article states
"ban cool apps for no real reason (Google Voice on the iPhone for one), cripple apps to protect business models (Skype on the iPhone) and outright ban data-heavy apps from third parties (Slingbox for the iPhone), all the while promoting their own app (MLB’s iPhone app)."
Looks like compromise to me, all in its best interest of course.