obfuscates all their security practices

https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform-security-guide.pdf

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/advanced-data-protection-for-icloud-sec973254c5f/web

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/cloudkit/encrypting_user_data

I had just got done reading an article about a large scale hack on their network

Source? Or should I just "trust you bro"

Did you know that most celebrity phone hacks are thru apple accounts?

Did you know that most celebrities own iPhones by a far margin? These aren't the encryption was broken hacks when someone is getting into an iCloud account, these are social engineering hacks. That's what happens when your publicist, your agent, and others have access to your digital accounts so they can get you a new phone quick while you are on the road, grab the photos you took on your phone from your iCloud account to share, etc. More holes in security.

about $300 at best(their hardware is on average 1-2 generations behind other devices on the market)

Flagship android phones, barring a few exceptions, are not sold without pre-installed apps that subsidize the cost of the phone.

Do you have an example of a device priced at $300 with competitive hardware to the base iPhone 14, without bloatware subsidizing the cost of the device? I'd accept that generally iPhones are ~$100-200 above the price of devices with competitive hardware, but a current gen iPhone having $300 hardware? The specs are very similar to other devices in similar price ranges

I've owned both Pixels and iPhones before. While each has its pros and cons, I've found that the app sandboxing, default settings, and ability to opt out of telemetry was always better on iPhone. And until google has free, easy-to-use E2E encryption for Android devices and the related cloud services, customer data on Google's servers is more at risk to be stolen/sold for profit/used without explicit user consent.