Wow. That’s a very particular hobby horse you rode in on. I sort of understand the iPhone users who want to be able to edit their HEIF masters. Not entirely as the HEIF files have no more information than the converted jpegs. The HEVC video is another matter, but iPhone HEIF files are not 16-bit or any better than jpegs at this point, at least in my own testing with an iPhone 11 Pro.
Moreover, I would be very cautious about betting the future of my photo archive on a proprietary new format, btw, Robert.