> What's different

I think what's different is that there aren't any/many dissenting companies building products without the bullshit.

In the past if consumers didn't like something they could shift their business to another company that wasn't doing that thing. Companies had to compete

I don't think I see much actual competition among companies anymore. They're all just trying to build as much lock-in as they can. For example, I think HP printers don't compete with Brother printers really, they just keep trying to milk HP customers more instead of winning new business.