Not for all cases, sure. It would be challenging to write an OS kernel or low level device firmware in Swift, but for a lot of other use cases it is absolutely a viable alternative to C and C++.

Apple is doing exactly that. They’ve already shipped stuff written that way. I think the Secure Enclave code is now Swift.

I’m pretty sure they have extra stuff on top at the moment to help them write ultra-strong/safe code that the released language doesn’t support directly yet.

But they are moving in that direction. Just because most people use Swift as a language where they don’t have to worry about memory allocation and with the large standard library doesn’t mean that’s all it can do.

It surely is from Apple's point of view, it is even expliclity mentioned on its documentation.

Apple doesn't care about what outsiders think, they own the platform.