Did they? Immutable system images are a pretty solid feature to have. It's a lot less "fall over broken as shit randomly" than desktop Linux is...
But you missed the point that Android's system image is immutable and updates are atomic. A user can't screw it up. This is not an insignificant feature, and it's something you also get with something like Fedora Silverblue. Which then also doesn't let you pick and choose what updates to get.