Stop making false analogies.
No other industry that I know of gives you a discount for locking you into a contract except the cell phone industry. People don't feel entitled to a subsidy in this situation; they're just saying if there is one they shouldn't be penalized for being early adopters, which are Apple's best customers. If Apple is willing to subsidize, but they tell me I have to wait 6 months, that doesn't change the fact that I'm eligible for a subsidy, just not right now. We're not asking for something they aren't willing to give, we're just asking for it now instead of having to wait for some arbitrary deadline which never should have been set in the first place since we never got a discount on the first phone.
Before the iPhone, anytime you signed a new contract, whether it's being a new customer, switching providers, or just renewing, you got a discount on your new phone. The only exception to this rule was the iPhone. So if discount = locked contract and we never got a discount, doesn't that mean that if we want a discount now they should be able to give it to us as long as we sign a locked contract? Yes.