Apple devices are only more “private” in the sense that the prevent third parties from collecting your data (don’t get me wrong, this is great), but then proceed to go and collect the same data for their own uses instead.
While I accept that Apple are far from perfect, my understanding is that even their data collection for their own purposes is still less than the data collection that Google use for their own purposes. And since their are only two major phone OS (Android and iOS), we can only choose between the lesser of the two evils.
After all, do you want to give your data to a company which is the world’s biggest ad company? Or instead give your data to a company whose business model is convincing people to buy $1000+ phone every year?
But yeah, I agree that Apple’s anti-consumer practices are awful. I wasn’t aware of the aftermarket parts re-using chips just for the serial numbers and I’m not even the least bit surprised. We need governments to bring in legislation to protect right to repair, because companies like Apple can’t be reasonable.