You’re correct in pointing out that whatever hardware you buy usually mandates an ecosystem to work within. It took me a long time to completely sever with the Apple ecosystem. Their ‘planned obsolescence’ model and ‘walled garden’ experience are really expensive when you consider the entire deal. Forcing people to retire perfectly good hardware by manipulating software with the solution being to purchase more of their hardware is insidious. Microsoft aren’t much better these days, but their ecosystem has many other expensive features faults.