>"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."

Not sure how common is my attitude but I do not give a flying fuck about what Apple does. I keep my own backups (been doing it since the 80s). Today's Apple to me looks like a money company that makes some hardware by accident.

and in general, the less I attached / depend on a single company for anything significant, the better I feel.