I mean, that it’s a “surprise” and that he is upset he only found out about the features existence only two days before New Years seem a bit, well nonsense. Apple mentioned the feature in the 2024 iPhone event, including that it will be a combination of both onboard ml and services (it’s at about 55 minutes in the stream). Then there’s the blog post that describes the privacy features fairly detailed from October 24 (Combining Machine Learning and Homomorphic Encryption in the Apple Ecosystem). I think the feature went live in iOS 18.1 which was released three days later on october 28 according to google. There’s even a post on Reddit from five months ago noting the toggle appearing in the beta.

There is a debate that could be had about opt in vs opt out if services but the idea that apple tried to sneak the feature in or hid how it works doesn’t hold up in my opinion.