I'm always really disappointed every time I hear an account from security researchers about how difficult it is to deal with Apple. I realize that Apple cannot possibly be alone in this, but there's something especially frustrating about a company that aggressively denies choice to its users, cites security as a major benefit of that, and then ignores critical feedback about vulnerabilities.

If you don't admit to vulnerabilities they don't exist, right?

Just one example, reneging on bug bounties is mind-blowingly stupid for a $3T company. Security researchers will sell what they find to the likes of NSO Pegasus instead of Apple. Also, the bad blood thus created makes them less likely to follow "responsible disclosure" and instead just disclose them as soon as discovered for kudos.

Doesn't the data in that blog show Apple improving faster than MicroSoft? Going from taking longer than to fix bugs in 2019 to being faster than them now?

It's pretty impressive that everyone seems to have reduced their time to fix bugs. Linux is doing an amazing job there.