Genuine question. Does Apple just not do these things? Is my privacy *actually* protected better with an iphone? I still have to use Google Mail for work and occasionally use Google Maps to find things.
When Google collects data on you, it's mainly so they can let other companies interact with you (ads), and those companies pay Google so that Google makes money.
When Apple collects data on you, it's mainly so that Apple can interact with you, and get you to pay Apple so that Apple makes money.
The existence of that third party in Google's motive (i.e., advertisers) incentivizes Google to collect data more aggressively, because as long as the people using Google are "happy enough" to not leave the platform, Google stands to benefit from collecting more data for advertisers. And "advertisers" isn't a well-defined demographic.
Apple's cost-benefit analysis when it comes to collecting user data is much ore clear-cut. If they can't tie data they're collecting to more revenue, there's not as much incentive for them to collect that data.
In my opinion, that's why the reporting earlier this year about Apple's pivot towards advertising is such a big deal[1]. It completely changes the relationship it's users have with the company.
1: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
In other words, cops interested in your whereabouts probably don't care much if you have an iOS or Android-based product. Moreover, the easier subpoena target is your wireless carrier. For their service to work, your carrier must map your billing info to your SIM IMEI (I say "must" lazily; I could imagine a ZKP system that gave out certificates showing that a randomized IMEI is paid up. But the angry privacy mob doesn't seem to be focused on carriers right now, so I don't see why they'd change).
According to anecdotes on the web (I am not a customer of Apple), Find My Friends uses IP geolocation as a GPS fallback. It stands to reason that Apple's ad network has built a similar database. I believe both major networks allow individual users to opt out of that database being used to serve them ads, but I don't know whether that means that the ad networks do not still know where that user is.
Apple tracks your location as long as Location Services is turned on.