That is a hasty oversimplification. Apple stands to make money selling your personal data just like Facebook and Google. And, were it true that Apple makes money only selling hardware, it would not feel the need to purposely confuse an iPhone user into being tracked by using dirty language tricks.
Apple may make some minuscule amount. Facebook and Google cannot survive without selling your personal data. It is beyond ethics, it is their entire business plan. If it makes you feel better to believe Apple is just as bad with your data go ahead.
Can't speak for Google, but Facebook certainly doesn't sell personal data. Facebook internally uses personal data to show targeted advertisements. Big difference.
Nor does Google. Twitter, however, does. That being said, Twitter is default public and they've been really open about it since day one.
Note: I have no special knowledge of Google, so maybe they do. Given that it would be really dumb to do so and lie about it, I believe that they do not.
It just sells access to use the data, not to know what the data is.
Their proposition is: "Give us $50 and you can target 26 year old iPhone users who go to Stanford and have posted about bratwurst in the past six hours."
You're paying to use the data they've collected about their users.
If they didn't sell access to use personal data, we'd be back to flat banner ads with no retargeting or privacy invading doubleclick social strata pinning.
Is that really a dark pattern. If Limit Tracking is On then theoretically your tracking is limited, no? Also Apple let's you get a new UDID if you want to wipe all data. Not the most lucrative way to handle advertising data. My biggest problem with tailored adverts is the uncanny valley. The more accurate they are the more it creeps me out.
I think you misunderstand dark pattern here. If you sit and think about it for a while, then yes, it makes perfect sense. But the point of a dark pattern is to give quick, hurried users a misconception of what the choice is.
The non-dark pattern here is to say "Ad Tracking - On/Off".