This is true, and the whole iOS/iPadOS/tvOS ecosystem supports HLS natively making it much easier to work with on that platform. In addition, Chrome recently added support for HLS[1] (and not DASH), so the native browser support for HLS is getting pretty wide.
HLS also has newer features that address the growing manifest issues you were seeing. [2]
All that said, I think a lot of people would feel more comfortable if the industry's adaptive streaming standard wasn't completely controlled by Apple.
How do you actually use HLS in the form of a native browser feature? Can you just put the m3u8 in the video src?
Yes, doing that works perfectly. If you use videojs it will automatically use native support if present.