>If they start selling your data, they'll quickly eliminate the very market share that gives them such power.

No they absolutely will not. 99% of Apple users do not care about privacy. And when Apple does this, those users will find excuses to why it's okay.

I share your cynicism in general but not your degree of cynicism. Apparently, when prompted by the new iOS, 96% have opted out of tracking, not 1% as your comment would suggest.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o...

Of course! They do opt out of tracking by other companies. Doing so is free, easy, and Apple encourages you to do it. That does not mean it will translate to opting out of Apple tracking you via the hardware. When it comes to hardware, privacy is far down the list of most people's priorities.

Having a prompt that says "Do you want X to do this scary sounding thing? Or not, and have 0 impact on you?" is worst possible way to do any kind of informed choice.

Not giving the user a choice is of course the worst possible way. If Apple makes it sound scary, maybe because it is? Certainly, the opposite is no better: "Hey, we just want to tailor ads to your lifestyle, mmm, good?"

Interesting. From your link 4% opted out of tracking in iOS 14.5 in the US, while globally that number is higher at 12%.

Absolutely false. Some may not care, but some care immensely - far more than 1%.

If iPhone started reneging on privacy guarantees, I for one would switch to a dumb feature phone the same day.

The fact that Facebook got decimated by the controls added indicate the level of concern people have when offered a choice.

>I for one would switch to a dumb feature phone

The fact that you would even consider this means you are a part of that 1%.

Au contraire, see 96% of apple users who decided they do not want to be tracked if given the choice. You still may be right about apples behaviour later on, who knows, but your 99% feels somewhat, lets say, unsubstantiated