Apple has never been about having options. They have always believed that the customer doesn't know what they want. They enforce whatever they think is best, and provide no ways to change it.
9/10 times I'm one of them. I stopped wanting unnecessary complexity in my tech towards the end of my teenage years. I'm much happier now with solutions that just work 100% of the time with no extra effort. The average person doesn't want or need to know how their tech works. It just needs to work
Apple is for iToddlers. That's how they view their customers: as mentally deficient children who must be hand held at all times, lest they run into traffic.
Additionally, there is support to swap eSIM to other devices Apple has implemented a method and Google is working to do so. Telecom compnaies in the US are already capable of doing so as well: https://www.androidpolice.com/android-14-dual-sim/
What choice did this actually take from you? You either want a phone number or you don't? You either want that number on a device or you don't? The choice still exist here. This post has solidified to me that Lemmy users literally know absolutely nothing about security and let bias interfere with educating themselves on this kind of thing.