Mark Zuckerberg explicitly called out the airpod pairing being closed as unfair in a semi recent interview, maybe he can throw some dollars that way and get it all working nicely in some meta products.
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It's not AirPods being closed that's unfair. Apple should be able to sell first party tech that only works with their own products.
What's unfair is Apple locking everyone else out. Not allowing or documenting for third parties to use the same APIs to enable something like automatic device switching in third party bluetooth headphones is the unfair part.
Same goes for the watch. That the Apple Watch only works with iPhone isn't the problem. The problem is no other third party is able to make a smartwatch that competes on an level playing field with the Apple Watch on Apple Devices, because Apple locks them out.
lock-out is the unfair problem.
Or am I missing something that distinguishes between these two in your view?
1. If I'm building a gadget for my line of products, I want to be able to test it only with my products. I don't want to spend money to make it work with anybody's else products. There are standards but there are bugs and non compliant products from known and unknown parties, their problems.
2. However I might also want to be able to build gadgets for somebody's else products, so I appreciate if those companies stick to standards and don't go out of their ways to make their products incompatible with gadgets of third parties. BTW, this reminds me about cartridges for inkjet printers.
So I think that it would be fair for Apple to say, "these earpieces are tested to work only on these products of mine: ...; if they happen to work on something else: congratulations! you got lucky." It won't be fair if they make their products incompatible with every other earpieces and at the same time claim that they are compliant to a standard.
But fairness and business are often at odds.