why should a manufacturer compromise handling?
Most likely, because the manufacturer sees a need. It would be a design choice, probably for either aerodynamic or mechanical reasons, maybe economical, or just quality control.
I asked Dave Thurston, who designed my Teal, and also designed the Lake Amphibian, some Grumman flying boats, and a WW2 fighter, why my Teal had such spongy and heavy ailerons. Particularly, compared to the fairly similar Lake. He told me that it was an aerodynamic design choice - a compromise. The short span, large chord ailerons of the Teal are so to be very effective at slow airspeeds, so you can lift a wingtip float out of the water early in the takeoff. Yes, they do that (and better than the Lake). They are fingertip light while planing on the water, which is nice, if you want to do a Step Turn. But, the large chord means that too much balance weight would have been required, so Vne is unusually slow, for flutter margins. So the ailerons are downright heavy in flight, but perfect on the water. It's not an aerobatic plane, so light in flight is not so vital. On the water, effective is really important. This does not matter for floatplanes, with two hulls, but is pretty important to balance a flying boat on one.
The Lake Amphibian has mechanical design choices: Push rod elevator control, rather than cable. It probably seemed like a good idea, nice crisp control in pitch - but... The push rods run under the floor, where a flying boat might have some water, which might freeze at altitude - locking the pitch control solid - and that has happened! I'd rather have sloppy cables, which I might bust loose. The Teal has the sloppy cables - Dave's learned design choice - lesson learned from the Lake
Cessnas use lots of cables, very few pushrods. Cable is simply cheap. Thousands of planes were sold cheap, which would never have sold expensive = more people fly more. They don't fly as well, but they fly! My 150's ailerons did get a bit nicer with the STOL kit installation, as it includes gap seals, which really do improve them - now you
have to use the rudder to keep the ball in the middle!
The DA-42, which has fairly nice handling, has push rod ailerons - very nice! But not only did Diamond use cables for the rudder, but they went way cheap, and did not even use swaged terminal ends, just nicopress crimps and thimbles - several of them. The result was stretching cables and stretching thimbles with large rudder forces (like at Vmca), so when I was flight testing the Lycoming 360 powered DA-42, with 45 more HP per side, there was no longer enough rudder to achieve Vmca, simple 'cause of rudder control circuit stretch. The pedal moved far enough, but the rudder didn't, and I managed to actually measure it!
And then there was a manufacturer, who though they designed fairly well, failed to enact good quality control, which resulted in the brand new plane I flight tested on skis being miserably dangerous to fly at slow speed - it spun, no matter what you did near the stall. But, before it got back to the factory to find the problem, the pilot (whom I had warned of this flaw) spun it into the death of two of them. it was manufactured that way.
So I'm with BPF, desirable handling characteristics are different, based on the type of plane, and what you're doing with it.