I'm a (mostly) happy [0] Apple customer. The lack of evidence that they are gathering all my bits makes me comfortable to use their products. I strongly feel we'd hear leaks about how they are saying one thing and doing another if they were. Employees of Apple aren't that loyal.
Yet here we are with Google and their "it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission" attitude.
[0] iOS 11 is bad. Just bad.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2011/04/27Apple-Q-A-on-Locati...
It is impossible that a unique device submits data about cell and wifi locations in an "anonymous" way aside from putting another party in between (a party that you'd have to trust), and that caveat is outrageously nonsensical to anyone with a hint of technical capability. But we trust that Apple is then mangling it up. Or do they?
And even if a cell phone does keep the same IP address for a long time, I'm confident that Apple is completely ignoring the IP address for each submission and taking only the encrypted location data. Apple has gone to great lengths to preserve privacy in so many other cases, it's outrageously nonsensical to accuse Apple of trying to match IP addresses with location data to identify individual devices (and besides, even if they did do that, all they'd know is the rough location history of some device, but nothing at all about what that device is or who owns it).
My guess is that they don't given that they have a setting in location services called "Wi-Fi networking". But this should definitely be investigated...
Apple is also much better at privacy now. Maybe they'll also change course and then we might as well stop using smartphones, cause we're being treated like sheep.
The non-Siri Apple machine learning is happening on device. This is something that Google would consider doing for 5s, before all in the meeting would start laughing and they'd go for uploading everything.
Google's entire business is carefully balanced on user trust. Anyone who posits some naive "they're an ad company" nonsense is just muddying the waters. Google is a user-trust company in a variety of spheres, and without that trust they would be annihilated.
Apple does not see user data as something to be hoarded
I've gotten downvoted elsewhere and will gladly eat it up to warn against this utterly ludicrous kool-aid fueled naivety. Apple says whatever nonsense gets a cheer at their latest product reveal. But if you don't think they're desperately vacuuming up data for their machine learning to stay ahead of the game, you should rethink your positions.
I remember virtually identical claims about Microsoft a decade ago, as an aside. Hell, in conversations about Google versus Microsoft, no less. Then Microsoft, you know, started viciously hoovering up user data like there's no tomorrow.