You’re very right, and that’s why I’m doubly puzzled: 1- flagships in general no longer make a whole lot of sense and 2- as a flagship, iPhone lags in specific areas that still can justify a flagship (mostly, camera).
The lock-in and ecosystem homogeneity that works for you is also a lock-out: I know quite a few people who can afford/justify an iPhone, Mac, and iPad for themselves, but either can’t or won’t afford/justify 5 iPhones, 5 Macs and 5 iPads for the whole family, so they switched to Android and Windows/Chromebooks. That switch is not painless in the short term (iMessages, mostly, plus different little things), but OK once they get used to Android’s dissimilarities and start to use its fortes (3rd-party best of breed apps especially Launcher, SD, widgets, USB port..).
I think sophisticated iUsers overestimate the average iUser. My most frequent iRequest is: “my phone is full !”, and I get to show them how to shuffle pics off to iCloud ;-p