Is Apple's privacy line bullshit?

Only yesterday I had a grumble about Apple tricking me into upgrading my iPhone and iPad to iOS 26, despite my efforts to avoid it.

Today I find iPadOS 26 is even worse than I thought, with UI glitches and poor handling of the simplest of things taken for granted for years (I’ve found rotation from landscape to portrait messes up the screen paint of Messages, for example).

I’m finding that many simple operations are now more steps than previously. In the App Store, the list of updates would appear under your account. Now it’s Account -> App Updates. Activating Home actions in CarPlay used to be one large button, now it takes an extra step to focus on the small circle (I understand why they’ve done this - if you have, say, a gate and a garage door, it lets you choose, where previously it was just the last device accessed. But that doesn’t change the fact it takes an extra – fiddly – step, like a rotation of BMW’s iDrive controller, to select the actual action. This is a poor design choice that’s a backwards step).

This is all friction, which is the opposite of what the Apple experience was like. Even opening packaging is made joyously simple, yet complexity now exists everywhere throughout their operating systems. There are no subtractions, no making things simpler. They’ve just added things — or worse, where they have removed something it’s to the detriment of the experience (see previous post about the camera controls).

More concerning though, is something popping up that echoes back to the mess I had with trying to delete RAW photos over 2 years ago — I have messages resurfacing from as far back as 2024.

I do use Messages in iCloud, but even if a device has it set to keep one year’s worth of messages, that should still only surface messages from mid 2025. There is a setting of ‘forever’, but I’ve never used that on any device. This also clearly demonstrates that when we think messages are deleted, they are not.

As much as this irks and frustrates me, I think it’s more out of disappointment. “There is no alternative”. Apple’s hardware is so superior to any other choice, across phones and computers, it just seems unnecessary that the software is massively letting the experience down. The smells pointing towards Apple “caring about privacy” being bullshit are doubly disappointing.

If you’re finding Apple’s products as frustrating as I am, and you’ve tried alternatives that you’re happy with, I’d love to hear about your experience. Drop me a line with the button below?