The iPhone was never intended to cater to developers writing personal-use, general computing software on their own devices, though. I know it’s an unpopular opinion on HN, but I don’t expect my iPhone to be an open development platform and I’m fine with that, even though I’m also a developer and software enthusiast.
Realistically, how many people would even be impacted by this restriction on multicast packet sending for personally-developed apps for personal use only? The number is vanishingly small relative to the total iPhone user base. It makes sense that Apple wouldn’t go out of their way to cater to that ultra-niche use case which can still get the access they need by requesting the permission.
I know people get angry that the iPhone doesn’t cater to every single niche personal use case, but honestly I’m fine with that. If I need to write a custom app for personal use that does something unique, I’m not going to reach for an iPhone anyway. However, I use an iPhone as my primary phone because Apple has focused on the things that matter for making it a good phone that does phone things well, which is exactly what most of us actually need.