picabo7 wrote:
Why? I find that totally unacceptable. As I told the chat representative, it's reason for me to move to even more Google products.
Most of the “why?” questions can only be answered by the people that work for Apple.
Here is the “why?” that Apple has provided: Two-factor authentication for Apple ID - Apple Support
If the usual Messages or SMS-based verifications are the central issue here, security keys are also now supported; hardware tokens.
if Google products best meet your needs, by all means use those. Unfortunately for the future of that choice, Google is also increasingly requiring multi-factor authentication and app-specific passwords on Google logins, as well.