> forcing you to enable location history
Not defending them but is it forced? I remember being asked about it. I used to keep it off for a long time but keep it on now to keep track of places I visit.
> there is no technical reason for this.
I have seen them give you best time to leave from home/office for/after work based on developing traffic as notifications. Same for reminders of events in calendar with location context.
Also, just my assumption but they might be adding locality context to searches.
The GDPR consent prompt they recently implemented on Google & YouTube is not actually GDPR compliant and does not offer an easy way to opt-out.
I can go on and on. I'm not saying Apple is perfect (a lot of the points you raised are valid), but it's sure as hell better than a company whose entire bottom-line is based on stalking people.