> Try it: pretend you are Apple and just try writing a statement that you would consider acceptable and that you wouldn't call "word games, deception and legalese".

Ok. "We're enabling custom encryption key management. You may now generate and use your own encryption keys. In addition to ensuring the device data is encrypted, nothing in your iCloud account can be recovered if you lose your key because it is all pre-encrypted before being sent to iCloud. Again, if you lose your key, there is no recovery possible. We'll also be opening up a new bug-bounty program specifically for identifying weaknesses and exploits in our baseband, firmware, and OS that could result in the leaking of your encryption keys and personal data. Here at Apple, we take your privacy serious."

I don't see any promise there that they won't somehow store your encryption key in a place where they can access it. I see a huge line saying "we invite you to try and catch us and if so we will try to find another way that you haven't yet found out about". So I think you failed on your premise.

You'd still get "But they could just push an OS update that sends them the keys"

Absolutely correct, no amount of wording will provide adequate proof. Thats why if you are providing a security product or product providing security features, open up the source code and provide a way to validate that that source is actually what is running on the hardware.

Until then I assume it is unsecure.