[clusterfish]

Apple also makes significant money from services and app store. They might not have an incentive to violate your privacy but they absolutely have all the incentives to lock you into their walled garden as much as you'll take it, and then some. They will happily do it under the guise of protecting user privacy too.

So no, they shouldn't get a pass on everything they do in the name of privacy just because they aren't an ad company. Although in this case the proxy server is reasonable I think.

[jaywalk]

For the vast majority of people, the walled garden is irrelevant. They're going to run the same apps on either Android or iOS, but on Android those apps have more ability to invade your privacy and Google is doing whatever it is they do to make money off you. On the other hand, Apple has every incentive to respect their users privacy.