You’re conflating and misconstruing a bunch of stuff here, but I think the main thing is that there are still a bunch of safety fails protecting users in this situation. Apple is making it sound like you’re basically giving your phone AIDS by even considering another app provider, but the reality is a lot more mundane. Use common sense (which hopefully most people have at least a little bit of) and as long as Apple does its job of building a modern computing platform, you’ll be fine.I'm just stating that it hasn't been fairly safe and secure for decades. But that very much depends on what you consider fairly safe. My view is it's been a $#!T show. A constant barrage of hacks and breaks in security of almost every single system we have. Phones being on the list as well.
iOS isn't exempt. And I've argued heavily against this EU law making iOS even less secure.
I personally use Mac's and PC's. But, my preference has been Mac for over 2 decades. One GREAT reason for that is security. Less hacking (Viruses, Trojans, zero days, etc) attempts on Apple's platform than Microsoft. And with the phones. iOS "IS" safer than Android. Everyone gets updates, and never have to worry about a carrier not supporting it or what level of hardware you have. As most iPhone users update their OS quickly and carry (purchase) more currently supported phones. Plus phone hardware support lasted longer than Android (Till recently with their 7 year support claims now). It's been a more secure platform. Perfect, no but more secure.
In fact, you could probably ignore this stuff completely — something Apple is going to probably do their best to encourage.
That said, if you’re so inept with computers that you shouldn’t be able to use the internet unsupervised, then yeah, you might be slightly more at risk, but you were at risk anyway via Safari, so it’s kind of a moot point.