Software problems like we are seeing are not something that happen over night. They slowly appear until you can’t see them. It takes years of bad design and decisions to get what we have.
I see this throughout the industry and can’t help conclude the problem started about 5 years ago, and we thus we are now seeing the results of Covid and possibly WFO.
I don't think this has to do with Covid or WFH. It is more likely that Apple is focused on showing huge profit margins, at the expense of hiring qualified staff, due to a quarter by quarter focus, in a mature market. When one person leaves, they don't get backfilled. You can hide a lot of sins with the aggressive push from marketing and focusing on hardware performance. How do you measure software experience? How do you brag about it?
You are right that it has been a cumulative process, and the issues will continue to accumulate. But it has nothing to do with Covid or WFH. It started years before that.
I see this throughout the industry and can’t help conclude the problem started about 5 years ago, and we thus we are now seeing the results of Covid and possibly WFO.