The story isn't particularly about Apple offering its own apps -- it's about it throwing lots of its apps into the top of search results when they're questionably relevant, and then doing its best to avoid saying there might have ever been anything suspect about the correctness of that behavior.
Apple is definitely better than most, but don't hand them a blank check. They recently stopped a Siri "grading" program after it was discovered that they were sending voice recordings to employees of a third-party contractor without users' consent: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/2/20751270/apple-stops-contr...
> The same company that won't admit hardware flaws won't admit they use your Data.
Although I agree that one shouldn't trust anyone, there's a difference here: certain uses of personal data come with reporting requirements, or are outright forbidden, whereas I think that there are no such requirements around hardware flaws.