I could not agree more.

It probably doesn't help that I just spend an hour trying to figure out how to update to 18.7.3 on my iphone. It turns out you can't. The only way to get security updates now is to upgrade to iOS 26. Apple no longer supports security updates to old major versions if the device is capable of running the new major release. Apple is no longer making choices that benefit customers, but ones that benefit project managers.