TPM isn’t inherently bad, it’s just a way to cryptographically store keys. TPM overall is great as it gives you a very secure way to store things like encryption keys.

You also don’t need TPM to lock down a system. Locked bootloaders have existed for decades and platforms have historically rolled their own encryption modules as they wanted, like your ipad example, or any video game console in the last 20 years, or most mobile phones, etc.

The ‘knows enough to be dangerous’ crowd has been fearmongering about tpm since it’s been introduced, it isn’t some magic bullet for vendor locking, since vendor locking is already achieved.