I’ve been using Illustrator since 1991 and image handling has always been weirdly painful.
Instead of treating this like other feature requests with upvoting, can you take more of a leadership role and just get this sorted?

1. Create a new image frame, for images.
2. Treat image frames like everything else with points, handles, strokes, corners and make them play nice so they can be used like any other Illustrator element (grouping, masking, alignment, path operations etc)
3. All Images then get a croppable frame by default, with no masking, crop tools or any extra work
4. Select a frame and import an image directly into it, plus copy/paste between frames
5. Commands to scale/fit images to the frame, and frame to image + all the shortcuts
6. Full asset management, linking, re-linking and auto-relinking like InDesign
7. Right-click image to 'Reveal in Finder'
8. Right-click image to 'Re-link'
9. Preview version of missing images
10. See the scaled percentage of images, and change the scale using the percentage
11. Rename embedded images
12. Use instances for multiple copies of the same embedded image, instead of bloating file sizes
After searching, many of these issues are listed as separate issues. But don't please treat them as such, it's time for a full image overhaul, it's that broken.
Cheers, Ben

Related...
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/32090362-add-frames-for-images-and-text-like-in-indesign
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/40607677-image-fitting-options-like-indesign-sketch-and-fi
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/39529621-add-relink-image-in-the-right-click-contextual
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/39515128-keep-linked-image-file-name-when-it-gets-embedded
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/36325972-show-missing-link-path-locations-like-indesign-t
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/41999827-prevent-astronomic-file-size-when-using-multiple-c
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/47763245-rename-unembed-to-unembed-all-when-several-images
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/36483463-cropping-images-can-illustrator-finally-offer-a-s
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/38818084-allow-drag-and-drop-of-cropped-images-like-indesig
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/34245136-display-performance-quality-like-indesign-an-imag
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/40607677-image-fitting-options-like-indesign-sketch-and-fi
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/37637584-resize-linked-images-to-100-or-adjust-image-s-sc
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/45654628-allow-repeat-to-work-on-linked-and-embedded-images
- https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/49037246-add-embed-images-to-menu-actions

David, I guess you mean the InDesign’s 'every image is paced within a frame paradigm', that makes total sense for publishing purposes, but can hardly be a universal in a more general app as Illustrator, which is not about layouts all the time?

Clicking Mask button once per image for me seems like not a too large price... It also works for several selected images at once.
What I do miss though and wish to have in Illustrator, is InDesign’s fitting options: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/40607677-image-fitting-options-like-indesign-sketch-and-fi — a request that has amazingly low vote count.

Masking like InDesign. It's valuable since I don't have to choose to Mask the image, it automatically places it in a mask like InDesign does