Mom's own iPhone use ToC (Terms of Conditions) to her son

Can't say I agree with that. I do believe there comes a point in a child's life where one can no longer blame the parents on the outcome or actions of a child.
From what your post is saying, the stricter, the better. I don't think that's right at all. I believe there needs to be a balance between the two. I don't believe parents should be on a friend-level with their children, on the other hand, I don't believe a parent is someone that should be feared or held in such a position that there is no room for compromise on certain rules and such.

Not saying I never got caught with anything, but eh, my parents are extremely strict and I got away with plenty.
I know a few people whose parents have absurdly strict rules, and the children work their way around it (of course, some of these friends are 18+ but still live at home).

Until around 16 (though I could go on to argue for any age up until the day someone dies, at a slow decrease in the ratio on the first, a drastic decrease on the second, and a moderate increase on the final), well over half of all decisions a child makes stem directly from what their parents taught them, a much smaller pieces of the pie being influence from friends/acquaintances, and ideas they formed on their own with no outside influence being being by far the smallest. Hell, until grade school they are just regurgitating morals, ideas, values, whatever you want to call them, without even fully understanding what the basic underlying concepts mean until much later; they are able to learn very quickly at a young age, but the downside of that is, it's just memorization, linking things together, not understanding what the concepts on either end actually mean.

And no, stricter is not better. Consistency is better. You make a rule, you enforce it, every single time, in the exact same way. Wiggle room is something a child should not have when it comes to rules; it makes them grow up and become politicians that believe the laws for an entire country should also have wiggle room, and look at that, here we are. The best way to create a serial killer is to erratically punish them for different things in different ways based on your mood without explaining the reasoning behind it to them.

In this case, it is technology that is made for an adult, so I feel that she is absolutely right in not giving him ownership of it. I've worked with computers all my life and even I didn't get one (a computer; to this day I still use a crappy last century cellphone because I see no need for something higher end; it's a phone, that's what I need it for, and that's all I need it for) until I turned 16.