They haven't just "lately been marketing themselves as an improvement over Google and Microsoft".

Anyone aware of Apple's history knows that Apple has always pushed consumer privacy forward, forcing others in the industry to follow.

I don't know any other consumer electronics company other than Apple that has been championing consumer privacy so much over the last 12-15 years.

If you learned about Apple's stance on privacy only in their recent marketing, that doesn't mean they haven't been doing it before.

What are they doing that other vendors aren't? From what I can tell their privacy-forward marketing began with the rollout of the Secure Enclave in the 5S, but Android vendors were already using hardware key stores and full disk encryption at that time.

I will admit that this action to change the advertising ID to default-off is a promising one though.

This is a good overview from last week what they've done so far (where others had to follow) and what they're doing next

https://youtu.be/08IC1AZTxls?t=2941