I like how you say that as though I hadn't already considered that point. Would it be too much to ask to perhaps give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm already aware of all of the major arguments for why Apple should allow sideloading?

Yes it's your device, but it's not your software. You don't own the software. And it's the software which is stopping you from doing what you want.

Really though I'm just saying that I resent arguments that fail to provide anything resembling a modicum of consistency around this. As far as I'm concerned, as long as Sony is allowed to keep the PlayStation locked down, Apple should have equal right to keep the iPhone locked down. And if you, the consumer, doesn't like it, don't buy a PlayStation. I realise this comes across as a trite, throwaway thing to say, but I absolutely mean it. It is, in my opinion, a slam dunk argument.

I think if you own the device, you do own the software, or framed the opposite way, if you don't own the software, you don't own the device

What you're proposing is not really ownership of the device in any meaningful way, but just a license to use it on somebody else's terms.

I don't want a world in which I don't own the device I pay for, so neither Sony nor Apple should be able to dictate what I do with them.

It's like selling you a screwdriver and then saying you can only use it with one specific brand of screw.

It's really nothing like your terrible analogy. Bad analogies are bad.

Ownership of software is clear-cut under the law: unless you hold the copyright, it's not yours. You have been granted permission to use the software under the restricted terms of a license. In practice though, the legal perspective isn't a useful one. It's another bad analogy, useful only because it's the one backed by law. What actually matters is what you can do.

It doesn't matter who "owns" it, you don't have the code needed to recompile the OS from source. Much less than sideloading apps, there are thousands of nominally trivial aspects of the OS which you cannot change without source code and a working build environment. Without this you don't have any ownership over the software in any useful sense.

You do own your piece of physical iPhone hardware, and it's yours to muck about with as much as you wish. But don't expect schematics or the ability to manufacture your own parts, or the ability to sideload more processing cores into the A14 chip, or replace the camera with a different module.

> As far as I'm concerned, as long as Sony is allowed to keep the PlayStation locked down.

I'm sure that now that the EU has finally woken up, gaming platforms will be under scrunity too. Mobile phones are a much more critical part of people's lives than game consoles, so it made sense to target them first.

I'm really not sure, because as much as the Hacker News crowd wants to believe otherwise, the entities exerting political pressure on Apple aren't doing so for the reasons you care about. It may result in an outcome you favour, but that's just a coincidence.