>Asking people to 100% return to the office is unpopular (or at least controversial) to some, right? If there was "real data", why wouldn't they mention that in their communications to staff? Instead, it's full of wooly statements like "there's something missing" and vague stuff about collaboration.

FYI, Facebook and Google CEOs both said productivity is down and they expect more out of their workers. They said so to their employees which obviously got leaked because there are tens of thousands of them. I'm guessing that they don't want to specifically blame remote/hybrid work because it might offend a lot of people and get bad PR. Instead, they're slowly nudging their workers back into the office.

Apple never said anything publicly or to their employees about the lack of productivity and they never will. They will never do so because it'd be a huge PR hit. It's not Apple's style.