Hiding/Disabling potentially nearby Wifi SSIDs from my MAC and/or my iPhone

It is the router that broadcasts the SSID, so it you are concerned about others accessing your network, you can prevent your SSID from being broadcasted and more effectively lock down your router to only allow access from your devices.

As for you seeing other SSID's, of course they can do the same on their router if they wish. You seeing their SSID does not make you vulnerable to any attack.

Beyond any security issue, there is a number of SSID's you may see when choosing to log into WiFi, but frankly you would only see them when choosing to log into a new network. If you are allowing to auto join your known networks, there is never any reason why you would even have to wade through the "jungle of networks".

There are 3 completely different concerns being discussed:

• Someone seeing your SSID as a security risk.
• You seeing someone else's SSID as a security risk.
• Inconvenience of wading through networks to choose the one you want when logging into a new network.

As for specifically addressing this as an issue with Apple devices, you will see the same behavior on Android/Chromebook as well. The settings for the routers to hide the SSID and set up MAC address filtering vary by brand.