Apple’s ad network gets ‘preferential access to users’ data’ vs Facebook, Google

Apple exempts all their iOS software from their own privacy scaremongering. iOS never pops up a scary dialog warning you that Camera has accessed your location twice in the last week, even though Camera accesses your location every time you start it. There is a completely separate iOS privacy regime for Apple's own apps.

Scaremongering isn't the right way to describe a real, well-documented ongoing concern. We have a long history of app developers trying to monetize their user's privacy, and that also explains why your comparison is inaccurate: if you buy an iOS device you are already trusting Apple. If you don't trust Camera to do nothing more than geotag your photos, you can't use iOS at all because every mechanism which would protect your privacy is built by the same company.

What the privacy measures are doing is giving the user the ability to review requests for access to your personal data by parties you aren't already trusting by virtue of owning the device.

Don't you think it's at least a little hypocritical that they don't extend the same privacy configuration options to their apps that they mandate for 3rd party apps? Sure, I generally trust Apple more than a random 3rd party developer, but the fact that Apple doesn't trust me to set my own privacy configuration for the camera makes me trust them less.

Again, how large is the population of people who don't trust Apple's apps not to exfiltrate their data but do trust Apple's OS to enforce restrictions on the apps built-in to the OS?

If, for example, you don't trust Camera with your location data you also need to be concerned about having cellular networking enabled and making sure that Apple's WiFi interface, crash report, software updates, Music/Books/TV, etc. don't share that same data or things like IP addresses which are often effectively the same.

Remember, this is only about code which ships in the OS. If you look at the apps which Apple ships through the app store, they do follow the same controls: my “Apple Store” app only allows location access while I'm using it, I can disable background app refresh, etc.