Anti-Cheat a step in the right direction but

As far as I'm aware, hardware bans are already issued for users that have been banned for cheating.

I've heard of cases where users got banned after playing at an Internet Cafe or after they installed used PC Parts and gotten banned afterwards as well. The legitimacy of those claims can be questioned, but that also indicates hardware bans aren't always a good thing either.
It's not really something that results in less cheats altogether, there are ways to bypass it, and those are seemingly getting more accessible too.

IP bans cannot really be done nowadays because IP addresses are mostly dynamic and cycle, and a lot are shared. (+ VPN's are already easily accessible so it wouldn't make much of a change)

In my eyes I'd assume making the game paid... or well, doing something like CS:GO/CS2 did, by adding a 'premium' queue.
So people can still play the game for free, but they only get matched with other players that are playing for free. Premium users can choose to play with F2P players or other premium users. (And you could technically lock ranked to premium users only)
I'd assume it would discourage a lot of players to cheat, but then again, the F2P lobbies would become an absolute mess and I doubt some of the community would be happy with that change.

It's pretty much a cat and mouse game where the cheat developers improve their cheats, and the anti-cheat developers improve their anti-cheat. There are only so many strategies they can implement before it would actually be bothersome to the normal community.

There are plenty of people working in the Security team that have a decent chunk of experience under their belts, so honestly, I'd trust them with what they're doing. This will at least make a decent impact on making it harder to use such devices, but it will never make it go away completely. (Though it's nice to get rid of most of the problematic users)

I completely get the worries related to false bans. For that we'll just have to wait and see. But I'm quite sure it will be actively monitored to make sure it's all working correctly. Next to that I'm sure they've done plenty of in-house trials to increase the detection accuracy. (Keep in mind that some appeals right now might seem automated, but mostly Customer Support adheres to a template to save some time)
According to some users there are a TON of users currently using those hardware modifications, so I'm sure it will be hard to discern the false bans if they do hit a lot of users. Can only be speculated really, and I agree that it is a valid concern.

I come to one question: why would anyone still be playing Apex Legends and other FPS games in 2026 without effective anti-cheat protection?

When I played FPS games 10-15 years ago, I didn't see as many obvious cheaters as I do in Apex Legends. The funniest thing is that some of them are at high levels and have been playing this way for years.

It's a complete disaster what this game has become. Wildcards in the morning and late at night are pure madness. I've never seen so many new accounts with aim that practically no one has.

It's gotten to the point where the game is playable for several hours a day during peak hours.

How many cheaters do we have now among the top matchmaking players? 30%? 40? More? It's truly insane that we still play games that have been completely taken over by cheaters. Despite their last post, nothing has changed, or if anything, it has only gotten worse, as it seems there are more and more cheaters every month. It's as if NO ONE OVERSEEING what's happening in pubs and Wildcard. The only thing they "occasionally" check is ranked play. They don't seem to care about anything beyond that, because it's impossible that so many cheaters are still playing this game.