DDG's entire schtick was privacy and they are switching from open data + commercial sources to a commercial company.

Isn't Apple's map data based on OSM too?

A lot of it came from TomTom.

It is, at least in part.

Is a "commercial" company inconsistent with privacy?

Privacy aside, Apple maps, in my experience, are definitely worse than Google in terms of actually corresponding to reality. Apple Maps navigation also takes me on convoluted routes far more often than Google does.

My own experience ( North east US) has been somewhat different recently.

Yes routes from Apple maps, may appear longer or more convoluted at first glance. However after using it ( due to CarPlay) for a while on routes I had previously regularly done using google maps, I inferred a reasoning for that.

On the ~90 minute journey to my in-laws, the predicted journey time, is generally advertised as being quicker on google, but in practice the time difference is marginal.

What was different in my experience anyway, is that Apple maps seems to try to minimize left turns where appropriate. The benefit being a noticeably less stressful journey.

Has anyone else noticed this?

I can’t speak to left turns, but someone attempted a careful evaluation of the turn-by-turn options and Apple’s estimates were generally more conservative, leading to the conclusion that you point out, that Apple looked slower but wasn’t.

Is it though? A few months ago Apple Maps gave me wrong directions going from Custer State Park to Mt. Rushmore (two major tourist locations relatively near one another).

At least here in western Norway, Mapbox’s directions are incredibly buggy, to the point where they’ll send you on a 150-kilometre scenic drive (including two ferries) to avoid a tunnel instead of going 15 kilometres straight through the mountain. This is apparently because they’re rolling their own telemetrics-based data on top of the OSM road network.

Then again, Apple Maps (on DuckDuckGo) seems to think I that want my maps labelled in Indonesian, so you may still have a point.

To be fair, the glass is often full of gasoline.