Easy.
The App Store stores a lot of sensitive data about you and is not end-to-end encrypted. They operate it just like everyone else. You also use Gmail, which is just as sensitive as your iMessages, and Gmail is not end-to-end encrypted, so it's not clear you value that as much as you say.
End-to-end encryption is certainly the most relevant feature for these scenarios.
App store DRM is a red herring, as a developer I can still run as much untrusted code on my MBP as I want and I don't see that going away any time soon.
> "can someone see that I've installed an app"
You say preferences and you didn't say what you mean. One meaning of the word preferences: what if you installed Grindr?
Sure I use gmail, I've been locked in for 15 years. Someday I'll get fed up enough to bite the bullet and move off it.
Apple can push updates and change the rules on your device at any time. Rooted Android works better in that regard: you can still use Google stuff on rooted devices. Also I don't think Apple's security posture for users in China is better than every "other big tech co."
The takeaway for me is that Apple's storytelling is really good. They are doing a good job on taking leadership on a limited set of privacy issues that you can convince busy people to feel strongly about. Whether or not that objectively matters is an open question.
Apple doesn’t run open hardware, and supports features users want that involve opening a network connection back home? Hard privacy fail.
I heard a good definition from my dad: "Privacy for me is pedestrians walking past my window not seeing me step out of the shower naked, or my neighbours not overhearing our domestic arguments."
Basically, if the nude photos you're taking on your mobile phone can be seen by random people, then you don't have privacy.
Apple encrypts my photos so that the IT guy managing the storage servers can't see them. Samsung is the type of company that includes a screen-capture "feature" in their TVs so that they can profile you for ad-targeting. I guarantee you that they've collected and can see the pictures of naked children in the bathtub from when someone used screen mirroring from their phone to show their relatives pictures of their grandkids. That's not privacy.
Sure, I use Google services, but I don't upload naked kid pictures to anything owned by Alphabet corp, so no problem.
However, I will never buy any Samsung product for any purpose because they laugh and point at customer expectations of privacy.
[1] Actually not that weird. Now that I've worked in government departments, I "get" the need for these regulations. Large organisations are made up of individuals, and both the org and the individual people will abuse their access to data for their own benefit. Many such people will even think they're doing the "right thing" while destroying freedom in the process, like people that keep trying to make voting systems traceable... so that vote buying will become easy again.
This should illuminate for you that there is nothing special about iCloud privacy or security, in any sense. It has the same real weaknesses as any other service that is UIs for normal people.
> there's a difference between a person being tricked to give up their credentlials and a zero day.
Only if you work at Apple.
We have mass conversational and voice cloning technology. It's not a question of if but when.