macOS Clean Install Wish

There are three options explained in How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support.

In my opinion those three options are better than iOS's only one. macOS also offers Time Machine, for which no iOS equivalent exists. It has as many restoration options as your TM backup devices can hold: practically limitless.

You can do that, within the limitations explained in How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support. You can also install any macOS version backed up on Time Machine, all the way back to Lion, maybe earlier.

I am not crazy about making a boot drive from a flash drive.

You don't have to do that. I have never found it even remotely preferable to using macOS Recovery. Justifiable reasons for doing that include installing macOS on a Mac without Internet access or to install macOS on multiple Macs without having to download a lot of data for each one.

What I like about the restore function in iTunes… it wipes the drive and updates to the latest OS. That is what I wish you could do with the Mac… wipe the HD… then install the latest OS.

You can do that too, but it's two separate steps: 1. erase 2. install. They are described in 2. Decide whether to erase (format) your disk.

You will probably get your wish someday though, as macOS and iOS become inexorably indistinguishable from each other. I surmise most iPhone users won't know or care what a "disk" is, if they don't already.

Why is that a problem? Sounds like it works the same but provides lots of additional options.