This is what I was going to say. It’s good to know if a message chain is going over Apples E2E encryption or regular SMS that’s completely transparent to the carrier. There’s also a fundamental technological difference that allows group messages over iMessage, but not over SMS. iOS 18 supporting RCS helps a lot, but I still think it’s a good idea to have an easy way to differentiate iMessages vs RCS vs SMS due to security and functional differences.

On the other hand, console generations often provide a hard cut-off for compatibility. You can’t always use previous gen accessories with a new console, and those accessories are usually only comparable with that console. I can’t play my Wii games on my switch, nor use the controllers and other accessories. This is kind of inherent to consoles in that they’re meant to be a consistent platform that allows developers to maximize performance by knowing that each console is going to be pretty much the same. With iOS though the software evolved from the idea of desktop software that runs on a variety of devices. Developers develop with the idea that their software will be used on devices with differing hardware and performance. It’s a completely different paradigm. With computers, people expect that the one they buy this year will be better than the one available last year, but they also don’t feel the need to buy every revision(aside specific performance heavy use cases), they decide on their own replacement schedule. That’s the paradigm that the iPhone came from, regular iterations, occasional major revisions, and long term support/backwards compatibility with previous models and accessories.

I feel like that’s a bad example as consoles tend to be household items rather than individual ones. Regular releases mean that people can choose their upgrade schedule and always have a recently released product available. Good example is cars, manufacturers release a new version of each model every year, but the differences are fairly minor. Then every 5-10 years they do a major revision to the model that’s a significant change. This way most people don’t feel put off when they buy a 2-3 year old model and a revision come out the following year, but a person can buy a new model after 5-10 years and feel like they got a significant upgrade from the previous one.

Apple does have a setting for regular, automatic, local backups. Though I wish they could do that while also automatically backing up to iCloud. My iCloud backup is under 5 but that’s partly because lots of stuff is already stored in iCloud. I think the real issue for a lot of people is when they have multiple devices, like work and personal phones and/or iPad or two, that all want to backup to that 5 GB. I always thought a compromise like the first 5 GB of a devices iCloud backup doesn’t count towards the iCloud storage. This solves the multiple device backups issue and still keeps a modest base amount of storage so people with just one device still have an incentive to purchase additional storage.

I use the iCloud Photo Library, and seems worthwhile to me, though my photo library isn’t huge and has lots of stupid work pics. Frees up my phone storage, still have access anywhere I’ve got internet access. Big thing to me though is backups, iCloud is my really essential data, e-mails, contacts, family photos. That gets automatically synced up to iCloud, back down to my iMac, and that iMac gets backed up to my UnRaid server and a Time Capsule. So without any input from me, all my photos get backed up independently, with redundancy and versioning as well as to the cloud. That’s a pretty neat system to me.

I’ve heard part of the issue is Qualcomm’s licensing is a percentage of the devices selling cost, so putting the same cellular chip in a MacBoom Pro costs a lot more than putting it in an iPhone. If Apple can make their own chips and doesn’t have to pay that fee it becomes a lot more affordable.

Lots are also kind of low hanging fruit. Things like someone hear some company has a new technology and that an unknown buyer is asking them to ramp production. The thing about rumors that far out is maybe it’s true, but between now and then some issue comes up that results in Apple changing some aspect of the design. That doesn’t necessarily mean the original rumour was wrong.

The thing is that while many companies have access to your data in various services, Apple has designed their systems such that they can’t access most user data. Can’t be both ways, your data is either private or not, and many would prefer it stay private.

As I understand the actual situation with iCloud and CSAM scanning is Apple does scan iCloud photos (the ones that users choose to upload to iCloud) if they can. A few years ago they tried to design a privacy focused version of that scanning that would allow them to access that kind of content for the purposes of reporting it, while preserving the users privacy. It was supposed to happen on device(while most companies only scan the photos on their servers) before the photos were uploaded, and use hashes to compare user photos to known CSAM material. This seemed an odd thing at the time, but a while after that Apple released end to end encryption for iCloud Photos, which means they can’t scan the uploaded photos anymore because they don’t have that access. Some have a theory that the big tech companies have regular contact with various government/law enforcement/etc. agencies and the on device scanning was a negotiated by them as a response to Apple’s plans to add E2E encryption to iCloud Photos, among other previously less secure services.

I use a similar thing. I’ve got a variety of devices across Micro-USB, USB-C and Lightning. The nubbin is annoying, but it’s worth it to have few cables that charge all my devices. I definitely look forward to getting everything to Qi 2 and/or USB-C, but I’m not going to replace devices just for that.