Maybe it's just me but the idea that my computer lets Apple (+ any LE organizations) surveil my app launches seems so much scarier than any malware.
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It’s not like Apple us building a database of apps you’ve launched linked to your address and social security number.
Linked to your identity if you have a credit card saved for say iTunes.
It's hilarious: most of the journalism I'm finding via DDG search is anti-Apple from the advertisers perspective. All these bloggers and Forbes writers decrying the fact that Apple keep making it harder for third parties to exfiltrate user data. Outraged that Apple would use this data internally making the marketplace non-competitive to both "tiny ad networks" and "Apple's corporate rivals" alike.
This is bogus. It seriously strangles the capabilities of the rival giants to get hold of that trove of data, but the small ad networks, representing businesses with whom Apple has a formal supplier relationship (the Apple Developer Program) and no direct competition are really no worse off.
Shock and awe.
The big change that caused this flurry of self-serving smear? Making 3rd party advertising opt-in. Forgive me if don't swoon with relief that they are now holding off on this user-empowering, privacy focussed change until next year: "to give advertisers and publisher more time to prepare" and come up with ways to subvert the new order.
Throughout this whole discussion users are talking about "ecosystems" and buying in to one or the other, and the effort of changing. The original issue in this thread was serious, reasonably short-lived, and an infrequent screw up (though that frequency is increasing if you ask me). The issue of Apple's ads is moot. They protect their right to be custodians of the user data they hold (or own, I'm still kind of unclear on that) and they continue to shore up the fences that keep the wolves at bay.
Point me to another major hardware/software/data vendor who shares those values.