I think that your usage was actually correct- if I understand correctly, choosing to use Mac's native keychain is kind of "going along with" what Apple prefers- is that the sense of what you were saying? If so then you could definitely say apps "toe the line" when they do this.
macOS has native password autofill which opens the Keychain experience to 3rd party password managers. Unfortunately browser support is limited to Safari (even though the API itself is open), while Strongbox [1] seems to be the only option on password manager side.
Maybe this will improve with the adoption of passkeys, where browsers are actually trying to integrate with the system passkeys API (a neighbor to autofill).
I've been using Firefox's built-in password manager before moving to Bitwarden, and I don't think Firefox's isn't all that bad.
All passwords are E2EE, and the sync server is open source and you can theoretically self host it.
I recently read about how Bitwarden adds Passkeys to Firefox, and was left sour there is no universal API for it. Bitwarden just overrides it as JS level, and hands it over to the browser if there are no passkeys selected/available.
I imagine Safari + keychain is coupled in a more secure and well-defined way.
I'm the opposite, while I don't trust any company, there are levels of trust I give. I trust Apple over a 3rd party. I remember when LastPass was touted by everyone as safe and secure...now look what's happened to them several times.
I mean, we'll see people NOW saying "oh, I never trusted LastPass", but that's BS.