the rolling wheel thing is terrible for another reason. your finger obscures the value when you roll back (up). it’s horrid
I have no trouble figuring out how to pick by year because the rest of iOS follows a standard UX.
It seems more important to me to support the native accessibility of the phone than use an external UI vendor.
I am a huge advocate of family members and elders to purchase devices they are comfortable operating. This is why my grandparents primarily use their desktop computer for any important things, and their iPhones for messaging/video chat.