Apple doesn't care about protecting you. They care about protecting their own advertising market share. They don't want to stop tracking your iPhone. They want competitors like Google to stop tracking your iPhone (for free). Apple wants to get paid for that.
If Apple cared about you then tracking functionality would not exist.
Apple gives apps the ability to track and users the option to disable that feature, but they built it with dark patterns.
Now they've removed the dark patterns, but you can still have this awful feature that nobody wants. Why?
And why is Apple getting credit for removing dark patterns that they created earlier? Why does this feature exist if 99.999% of people don't want it in the first place?
Keep in mind that when the GDPR went in effect (and maybe before that with the "cookie law", as the advertising ID is equivalent to a tracking cookie), using the system-wide advertising ID (which is enabled by default - the dark pattern you were talking about) would be in breach of the regulation; apps should still ask for consent before using it and allow users to decline.
I can't fully fault Apple for expecting that the GDPR would actually be enforced and clean things up. It clearly wasn't the case however and they're thankfully making changes to mitigate that.
1. zero tracking (not even sure you can do this)
2. apple tracking, and the ability to chose others who track you
To be equal Apple would have to allow blocking Apple's own tracking while still allowing user selected 3rd parties to track. Apple doesn't give this option. If you don't want them to track you you're required to turn off all tracking, not just Apple's tracking.