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Interesting that this is published under the MIT, rather than Apple’s more favorite Apache 2, license

Why is it interesting?

Presumably because MIT is even more permissive and it’s a change in Apple’s behavior.

Given the age of TrueType, wouldn't nearly all patents be expired already?

Apache2's license I've heard described as mutually-assured-patent-destruction - if you use the code and make a patent claim, your rights to use the code go away.

So Apache2 offers little benefit here, and MIT may get it into more hands?

Some corporations prefer Apache 2.0 for projects where they'll be accepting contributions, because it includes patent protection and retaliation clauses. In case like this, where source code is just being published for reference and contributions aren't accepted, those risks don't exist.

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