So let me get this straight: the author admits Apple doesn't need to do this for business reasons, but is asking them to be nice and do it for other reasons? And the option of, you know, using one's market power to give Apple an incentive to do it for business reasons isn't on the table?
The argument is that due to all of the other lock-in effects, users don't really have the choice of switching to another smaller device (which, fwiw, doesn't even really exist anymore either: the world seems to have decided high quality small phones are a bad idea).
Which have been common knowledge about Apple for longer than plenty of Apple users have been alive. And if users choose to keep on being users when they know full well what Apple is up to, again, self-inflicted wound.
Does the term "self-inflicted wound" ring a bell?