Looks like lot of things changed since last time you actually used an apple device. Apple has swipe down to search for a while now which doesn’t require reaching up. Safari has option to put url bar to top but default is bottom for more than a year now which is reachable. I personally never understood need for third party keyboard apps but that’s personal choice. 3rd party app store is valid suggestion but that seems to be coming in future update. but might be restricted only to EU. You could probably access it by setting iPhone region to some country in EU but that’s speculation.

Finally linux is getting popular enough to make viruses. Yay?. Insert gru meme here

IMO “default” has to be simple and user friendly. I’m not saying kde is not user friendly but it has overwhelming amount of options which I personally think is too much. of course there are people that use these but i think something like gnome is very simple and more approachable. I think this is why many distros use gnome as default. I would consider myself to be a mid level user i started with mint linux -> ubuntu -> debian -> manjaro -> garuda -> arch -> fedora -> and finally settled on nixos. I have tried lot of desktop environments and i liked kde very much but the amount of customisation made it a chore after a while. i can use the defaults perfectly fine but if something has a toggle to choose different options i try all of them. Which i agree is a not applicable for everyone. But i think sometimes taking option away from user works example ios and macos. So, i settled on gnome. I understand it is a personal choice. I’m just trying to explain why it might not be a good default from my perspective.

Esim and carrier lock are not same thing and even with phones with physical sim can have carrier lock.