> The same is true for Java arrays.

This is an unfortunate relic of pre-1.5 Java. The rest of the Collection API types correctly. A type-safe generic alternative is Arrays::setAll.

> if you try to modify a `List` or similar collection, it may throw an `UnsupportedOperationException`

Again, an historical artifact. `List` is from Java 1.2, you would effectively have to deprecate List<T> for that to work.