The thing is: we often associate ad tracking and (lack of) privacy. It is certainly one aspect, but it is far from the whole picture. The most damaging form of privacy violations are usually not caused by advertisers but first by people who are close to you (ex: revenge porn), and second by hackers (ex: blackmail). I used the fappening as an example because nude pictures are the archetype of private data.
As for targeting phishing, I think companies who take privacy seriously have to do something about it. Phishing is the number one threat users face when it comes to cybersecurity and therefore privacy.
Now comes the debatable part: hackers targeted the iCloud platform, why? Why not Picasa, or Facebook, or whatever place images are stored? My hypothesis is that iCloud was the best target for such an attack, partly because compared to the others, it didn't offer as much anti-phishing security.
EDIT: I just noticed I didn't mention governments. First, for most people in western countries, government is unlikely to be their biggest problem. So I would rather focus on the immediate surroundings (ex: boss, partner, neighbors, etc...). And if the government really is after you, then an Apple solution might be good, but I don't think they are completely turstworthy. They are still bound by the US law after all, and they are not completely zero-knowledge. To make things clear, Google and Facebook are also out in that case.
Possibly because the celebrities targeted used iPhones, and didn’t publish their private pictures to Facebook or a Google service.
By comparaison, while there have been a few issues with Google, for a company that processes so much personal data, their track record is excellent. I can't think of any major personal data leak that could be attributed to Google.
Maybe Apple got better within these 4 years, TBH, they most likely did. However, I don't consider 4 years to be a "long time" for a tech giant. Their privacy focus is relatively recent.