The major third party apps are still on Google Play though, why should they act any differently on iOS?
Your point on Chrome is indeed an issue, and I am pessimistic. While Firefox has a browser engine, how many can they spare to port/retrofit it for iOS?
Your Android parents and friends are lucky. They are at least able to easily uninstall slow crap stuff from their phones. You cannot uninstall slow crap Safari from an iPhone.
Which is irrelevant. You can always not use it. And when you don't use it, it doesn't slow down your iPhone.
In fact it doesn't slow down your iPhone even when you use it.
In Safari's backend is close up there with Chrome for speed and beats Firefox (as seen in macOS, where all three engines are available). It also does so with much less memory and cpu load, to the point that it adds 20% or more of battery life to use it on a laptop.
Apple forces all other browsers to be equally slow.
> it adds 20% or more of battery life to use it on a laptop.
This hasn't been true for years.
Not if Chrome gets a huge mobile web broswer share and you end up needing to use it for compatibility.
Or if major third party apps that you want to use (say Facebook or YouTube or whatever) are all moving into their vendor's app stores.
>the whole pretense of "the curating of the store allows them to ensure high quality safety" is frankly not in line with reality, the app store being full of crap and spam while blocking updates to apps that apple don't like (spotify for example).
I don't think it is. It might not have only top tier apps, but it's not full of spam and crap the way the Android store is, and has a much smaller problem with malware.
Just because the bad apps aren't reduced to 0% compared to Android, doesn't mean a 50-80% reduction is not already a good thing.
As the "tech guy", I routinely have to uninstall slow crap stuff that hogs down the whole phone from parents and friends Android phones. iOS? Not so much, if ever.