As a System Architect who recently uncovered a critical infrastructure flaw in iCloud (the 27.2KB sync corruption issue), I am often seen as a critic of Apple. However, I wanted to step back and analyze their architecture through the lens of trade-offs.

Many people criticize Apple for being "closed," but from a large-scale migration perspective (30k+ users), I’ve started to see their constraints as a deliberate choice to lower cognitive load. I’d love to hear how other architects balance "User Freedom" vs. "System Predictability" in their own infrastructures.