In previous versions of PS I could just move the crop area around freely, rotating and resizing it. But now it seems it always snaps to is default position and I need to keep the CTRL-key pressed if I want to move it around without snapping.
Am I missing some preference I can set or is this just new behaviour I need to get used to?
Disable/enable snapping with View > Snap. You'll see a keyboard shortcut in the menu. Change the shortcut in Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts if you want.