It's more complicated than that, a lot of the people who says that Apple keeps things secure and tight compared to Android's wild west will themselves have a jail-broken iPhone.
The iPhone was hot when it came out, and was a lot of people's first taste of the smartphone, and it's very easy to fall into tribalism. You and I aren't immune to it, there are hundreds of things we are irrational about in our lives. Arguments in favor of your chosen tribe are proxy arguments for preserving your own value, identity, and dignity.
Those people also forget or deliberately ignore the existence if MacOS, and generally exaggerate the state of Android. MacOS isn't locked down like iOS yet normal laypeople can use it just fine without shooting themselves in the foot. And if there is a problem with Android, it isn't ""sideloaded"" apps but rather all the shitware in Google's own appstore. None of these three are anything like the wild west that was late 90s early 00s windows. Even Windows itself isn't that way anymore.
People aren't saying nice things about Apple to appease Apple from locking things down.
People who rebelliously use non-Apple products are helping to keep the alternatives alive. It's a tradeoff of now vs future. That's the real tradeoff, it's not cults.
People think that if they keep saying nice things about Apple, they will not one day lock them down hard.