Apple does stuff like this so much and gets so little flak for it.
It would be one thing if the private APIs were limited to system frameworks and features while Apple’s own apps weren’t allowed to use them, but they do. E.g. The Swift Playgrounds app for iPad is allowed to share and compile code, run separate processes, etc. which isn’t normally allowed in the AppStore. They also use blur and other graphical effects (outside of the background blur material and the SwiftUI blur modifier) that are unavailable outside of private APIs.
It stinks because of the perceived hypocrisy and the inability to compete on a level playing field or leave the AppStore (and I say this as someone who normally doesn’t mind the walled garden!)
The best known example of these methods is how Microsoft has exploited the replacement of MS-DOS with Windows 3.0 and especially with Windows 95.
During the MS-DOS years, the only Microsoft software products that were successful were their software development tools, i.e. compilers and interpreters, and even those had strong competition, mainly from Borland. Those MS products addressed only a small market and they could not provide large revenues. The most successful software products for MS-DOS were from many other companies.
That changed abruptly with the transition to various Windows versions, when the Microsoft developers started to have a huge advantage over those from any other company, both by being able to use undocumented internal APIs provided by the MS operating systems and also by knowing in advance the future documented APIs, before they were revealed to competitors.
Thus in a few years MS Office has transitioned from an irrelevant product, much inferior to the competition, to the dominant suite of office programs, which has eliminated all competitors and which has become the main source of revenue for MS.
It would be one thing if the private APIs were limited to system frameworks and features while Apple’s own apps weren’t allowed to use them, but they do. E.g. The Swift Playgrounds app for iPad is allowed to share and compile code, run separate processes, etc. which isn’t normally allowed in the AppStore. They also use blur and other graphical effects (outside of the background blur material and the SwiftUI blur modifier) that are unavailable outside of private APIs.
It stinks because of the perceived hypocrisy and the inability to compete on a level playing field or leave the AppStore (and I say this as someone who normally doesn’t mind the walled garden!)