Shopping malls get to reject tenants. Store owners get to reject products. Store owners also get to make loud religious and political statements (Forever 21 anyone?). Nobody owes you disinterested businesses or general purpose computing.

I agree that its erosion is dangerous, which is why my last smartphone was a Motorola Droid 3. It had superior specs and more freedom, but after a couple of months, revealed itself to be absolute crap. At the end of the day I took the tightly integrated and polished walled garden over what was at that point bloated, buggy abandonware, and it's one of the best electronics purchasing decisions I've ever made. I consider it wrong that people believe this option shouldn't even be available to consumers.

Same goes for software freedom. I would move from OSX to Ubuntu, from Creative Suite to GIMP, and from Office to Libre/Neo/OpenOffice in a heartbeat if either of those products served my needs effectively. I have tried them all, and they don't.

It's great that the anti-Apple crowd continues to make noise. Consumers should know what they're getting into, and I hope the Android ecosystem develops a high-quality, mature, stable, non-gimmicky product. But handset manufacturers are not last-mile infrastructure. Consumers have a choice. Popularity != absolute control.