You could literally do whatever you desired on windows. Which is the only thing I want from iphones. There has never been a good reason not to have some form of opt in root on the phone aside from apple greed.
In the 90's you virtually couldn't buy a computer without Windows because Microsoft forced manufacturers to pay them for Windows for every computer they built and sold, no matter whether that computer contained Windows or not.
And you can still install whatever you want on Macs.
Just saying, let's not look at the 90's as some paragon of openness.
I literally could buy computers without windows in the 90-s. Probably 2 or 3 of them. And you could always build your rig from scratch - and no windows then.
They were extremely hard to find, and they weren't any cheaper. You still paid for Windows even if you didn't receive it (even if you didn't realize that at the time).
Of course you could build your own, but that was for hobbyists, not regular consumers.
