I'm in two minds about this. You're not wrong, but I would be terrified if my parents had this "freedom". If some popular app required them to give it full access to their phone, they would do it, and they wouldn't understand the risks involved. I have always recommended Apple ecosystem products to my family specifically because it is relatively hard to do the Wrong Thing, and I honestly believe Apple being forced to loosen this control is a net bad.

If you want to root your phone and install all sorts of weird system-level tools, I have no idea why you'd choose an iPhone in the first place. That kind of thing is virtually the raison d'etre of Android.