> their “Done” or “Close” buttons on top, which are equivalent to “back”

Are they though? The former are for a modal, back is for a stack.

Apple likes to have a strong model of where things came from. Animations, verbs and gestures follow from that. In my experience of Android, things just appear/disappear with often arbitrary animations, which add nothing, it's like a cargo cult says an animation must go here but it doesn't matter which one. I prefer iOS's consistency here.