While there are many meaningful advantages and benefits from working with other people in a common area, very little of those benefits are passed on to people who simply don’t want to be there.

Forcing people who would prefer to work from home is mostly to the benefit of those that thrive in a social environment. Extraverts that have benefited from the status quo will largely want to return to it, regardless of any particular employee’s inclinations to stay working from home.

I don’t think “leaving it up to the employee” is necessarily the best option, either. You’re creating problems potentially in either circumstance.

For a corporation as large as Apple it seems foolish to make a policy like this company-wide when it’s pretty clear that individual teams should probably make this decision as a group.