This is a for-profit company. It will always do what is more profitable, even if they don't do it right away.
There is an interesting lesson you can learn from history: Google Maps vs Apple Maps.
Google set up their system to track each individual's location history forever, even if the user turned off the setting that Google said would stop this behavior. This data can be handy when you're trying to keep map data updated.
However, you don't have to track each user's location constantly to get the benefit.
> “We specifically don’t collect data, even from point A to point B,” notes Cue. “We collect data — when we do it — in an anonymous fashion, in subsections of the whole, so we couldn’t even say that there is a person that went from point A to point B.
The segments that he is referring to are sliced out of any given person’s navigation session. Neither the beginning or the end of any trip is ever transmitted to Apple. Rotating identifiers, not personal information, are assigned to any data or requests sent to Apple and it augments the “ground truth” data provided by its own mapping vehicles with this “probe data” sent back from iPhones.
Because only random segments of any person’s drive is ever sent and that data is completely anonymized, there is never a way to tell if any trip was ever a single individual.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-f...
However the fundamental difference is that their model is being an hardware company.
Remember what their advertising clients disliked about Apple's ad platform compared to the likes of Facebook and Google?
> A new report on Advertising Age has revealed what advertisers think of Apple's arrogance when it comes to its mobile advertising platform and its tight grip on user data.
"One person familiar with the situation exec said Apple's refusal to share data makes it the best-looking girl at the party, forced to wear a bag over her head," the AdAge report read.
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/3568/20140222/apple-cares...
All of these companies deserve their due scrutiny. Specifically around the illusion of privacy though, nobody has further to fall than Apple.
