It would have been much more productive to team up with the C# team as C# is a mature language, and a combined Apple + Microsoft would have been able to compete against java (esp. with Oracle as owner of java).
Obviously iOS platforms are much less constrained today, but not having to run a GC is a pretty nice thing.
Maybe C# could've been extended into that universe (I know Midori had their own variant but don't know much about it) but it seems daunting to then make that compatible.
The modern GC in java is amazingly fast and with a few tricks likely to be good enough.
Sounds like a lot of armchair generals debating in hindsight about any problem in anything that fits their dislike bias rather than fore-sighting about the specifics before it has happened.
No wonder that is the reason why they are preferring to moving everyone to use Dart / Flutter in their future operating system instead of continuing to use Java.
It is like as if Android was designed to be a disaster.
It's evident that Google and many developers have had enough of it from the runtime, Java, JDKs and the whole system. Otherwise, why on earth are they planning to move away from it all in the first place?
Once again, from the perspective of the user or the app developer, they don't care, Android still just doesn't cut it against iOS. No wonder Android is always second place.