For crying out loud

Being the only company not letting you alter your photos isn't some holy crusade. Federighi was just giving a semi-decent excuse for why Apple couldn't offer what was being offered by others at the time. Apple (like every other company) have a long history of this, and there's no reason to hold Apple to any higher standard than anyone else.

Now they can, so they will. I don't see the problem with other people altering their own photos as they see fit. Presumably the holier-than-thou brigade who want historical accuracy can just ... not do that.

It's a whole different thing when you alter a photo to cause distress to someone else, but if someone's zooming in on their kids, changing the angle of the shoot, or rubbing out a bottle in the background, and you have a problem with that .... get a life.

If it gets people to enjoy photos they took even if transformed, I'd rather it over the alternatives of people just entirely generating slop altogether.

I know my way around photo editors, someone being able to easily remove a water bottle is the least of my concerns. Most of these are tasks few genuinely mourn having a required level of skill to do, and by large the vast majority of edits people will actually do with this are still relatively simple to anyone versed in photoshop.