Although I agree with you that the headphone jack should be brought back, I dont think it’s fair to say they’re forcing you into their ecosystem.

Apple making apple watches only work with iPhones is forcing you into their ecosystem, but with this phone you can use any Bluetooth headphones.

I would have expected that the ad supported Spotify would have still worked. There is still a free tier.

Last I knew Google Fiber used PON. With PON a provider would not allow a subscriber to use their own equipment.

The above is important because PON is essentialy one bidirectional fiber from a central office serving dozens of customers in the field. If you plug in with something on the same wavelength you could interrupt all the other customers on your PON. In PON since your fiber is not dedicated all the way back to the CO, they would have no way to know what device was trying to connect to their access node. They would need to configure your devices Mac address similar to how DOCSIS cable internet works.

If they ARE using dedicated fibers back to the CO then that would more likely be Active Ethernet, a slightly different technology. They would probably still tell you no because of how the CPE (the box at your house) needs to be remotely configured by the access node for shapers etc.

Is it possible that you have a power issue at your house that is causing the failures?

I got in on the Kickstarter for the Abode (not a misspelling) software suite by Stuart Semple and am hoping that when they release that it at least beats Darktable. Also, Darktable is pretty great as a free alternative to Lightroom.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-suite-of-world-class-design-and-photography-tools

Edit: I named him because he created the Freetone color palette when Pantone upped their license fee on Adobe. He also made a few paints and sells them at reasonable prices as an accessible alternative to more expensive paints.