You should read the article because this isn't about phone prices. It's about stuff that you actually can only buy from them.
We're backsliding from a world where you could have just one or two streaming platforms and basically get access to everything to one that's even worse than old cable packages.
The article is talking about Apple services you can use on Android or Windows or even regular Linux PCs, though. There's no "free computing" alternative to Apple+ , other than the high seas.
Linux. Linux respects user freedom. The user is free to examine the code of the software or os, modify it to their liking and share it on
For example, if Apple was FOSS/Libre and people were unhappy with any Apple app, iOS, macos, ipados, tvos, watchos - they could simply modify the code to make it work the way they want (fork it, is the technical term) and even release the new version under a new name. Or they could keep it for their own personal use.
In Linux you can do exactly that. I could take any Linux OS, make as many changes as I want and use it for myself or name it and make it available for download. I could even sell it.
In fact they is exactly what Steve did with Unix. Unix is like Linux in how it works. And there are free Unix versions available called FreeBSD.
Steve Jobs took that free OS, modified it to make NextOS and sold it on his Next PC's.
When Apple acquired Next, they renamed NextOS to AppleOS/OS X/macOS. Later they modified it and called it iOS, then ipadOS, then TVOS, then WatchOS.