Well, but you initially said that HyperCard "had to die", presumably because it was user-programmable. You seem to be implying that Apple had a conscious policy of opposing user programming.
That definitely was not the case at the time HyperCard was being developed. I know because I was there. I even worked on the HyperCard team for a while.
HyperCard's troubles had nothing to do with an Apple policy against user programmability, and everything to do with the fact that management couldn't figure out how to make it into a product that paid for itself.
If you want to argue that Apple has a policy against user programming now, well, maybe they do. I don't know. The last time I worked there was in the 1990s. But they didn't have any such policy when HyperCard was being shipped.
Re. not requiring a tithe to Apple, it's significant that their most popular OS (by orders of magnitude?):
* requires a tithe
* is not user programmable