>For the average of users they don't really mind

That's usually because they never used or even know the existence of something better. Same thing was being said 15 years ago for IE. The average user was fine with it until they tried Chrome (or Firefox/Opera before).

Other than being a professional programmer, which I keep pretty compartmentalized from the rest of my life, I think I'm a pretty average computer and web user.

I certainly know other browsers exist and I have even used them. I still don't care I just use what comes installed on the machine because like I said I don't care.

Hm even my non tech classmates in college knew the difference between chrome and safari. They care about speed and features they get used to (e.g. chrome password manager follows you to your phone, syncs history across devices). To be an absolute non user of such features to the point of not caring is not what I’d consider typical.

Could it be an age cohort thing?

Where did you get the idea that I don't use the features?

I'm not interested in evaluating or comparing the features, but I'll use them if they suit my needs.

You can't use them if they're not on the default application installed on your system.

Right. They only care when it starts being noticeably slow/laggy, or causing other problems, or if a button/menu item they often use has changed positions or removed altogether. "I've been clicking this spot for years and it always works, now its completely unusable!".

Take for example the iMessage feature that lets you see message timestamps. There are no visual affordances to indicate how to do it. My parents couldn’t figure it out (pull the messages left!) it’s about the same as not having the feature. Wanna install an alternate sms app? Good luck, apple won’t let you because this isn’t android.

So sure, people won’t complain — they just accept that this is life, but life could be better if apple didn’t have monopolistic behaviors.