> seriously, anyone at this point advocating for any other phone/os/service out there besides apple is really going out of their way to swim up river.

This comment is made every time Apple makes one step forward but it's apparently easy to forget that Apple also took ten steps back.

I'm using LineageOS + MicroG happily and there are other alternatives that don't buy into any of these big corporate monoliths.

I'm not swimming up river but you are carrying water for a multi-trillion dollar behemoth.

Apple is hella late to the game encrypting data and you better bet there's a backdoor to getting that data if an FBI request comes in.