Exactly. As an iphone user (and linux sysadmin, compartmentalization is not that hard), i agree with your criticisms of apple most of the time. They just make the better phone IMHO, and I say that as a nexus 4, nexus 6p, pixel XL, oneplus 7 pro, and oneplus 9 pro user. Yes i used custom roms, no I do not have the patience to treat my phone as a linux project anymore.
I regularly have android users go out of their way to try and fight me over this, and they always claim I must not have used android. It’s annoying to field over and over.
But the implementation is often a bit more stable or user friendly. Those features often do not light the world on fire because the user experience is not there yet, and google moves on too fast to finish the feature.