Not quite. Apple has done a very aggressive marketing campaign to encourage us to perceive them as privacy-forward.

They've also done an admirable job marketing the specifics of what they do. What's left is all the places where they don't respect the privacy of their users because there's limited marketing value. They don't claim E2E on many services because they don't have it, and adding it wouldn't help marketing. My guess is some Tier 1 support person can drop in and take a look at the GPS pings from your phone.

But don't take my word for it. The Atlantic is far more reputable: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apple...

It’s a bad article. The crux of it is Apple’s a hypocrite because they haven’t banned Facebook or worked hard enough on Maps. Give me a break. They just rolled out privacy nutrition labels, restrict geolocation, do more than any other platform. They’ve been investing heavily in maps for years.

Your E2E argument is poorly supported as well — “marketing value” doesn’t explain why it’s for messaging and keys but not photos and files. They have one of the strongest E2E encrypted messaging systems, it even works securely in China. There are technical reasons why E2E is not a good choice for all consumer data namely the impossibility of data recovery.