[agust]

So? They removed them without any announcement for two weeks (hoping no one would notice), then officially announced it on their website when the backlash was growing.

They then backed down after Open Web Advocacy ran surveys, an open letter and the EU started a investigation.

[ein0p]

Why would they announce if it's a beta? For all we know it could have been a bug or something, or an unfinished attempt to change it in some ways. I'm having a hard time imagining Apple just willy nilly nuking a fairly prominent feature many people use. Including myself, by the way.

[agust]

You seem particularly willing to ignore the facts in order to paint Apple's actions in a good light.

Apple releases developer notes containing changes included in its betas. Such a change should obviously have appeared right away when iOS 17.4 beta 1 was released. It did not.

After two weeks of backlash, Apple did confirm it was removing the feature in a public statement. They just did not want to announce it publicly before.

After two other weeks of bigger backlash and the start of an EU investigation, they publicly announced they would not remove the feature after all.

They 100% intended to remove the feature, and 100% backed down.