We are "neck deep in the ecosystem" by the mere virtue of actually using the said features. If that means "we don't know any better" then we're not going to find a productive common ground for discussion. We took what was offered. Again, do let me know if you believe there are actual alternatives. One example: Apple Photos' OCR worked better than many paid softwares I used 5-10 years ago.

And yeah I heard about Immich, thank you for the reminder. Guess I'll go scout what's out there and likely post a blog article here on HN at one point.