The only difference is that Apple is not an advertising company. Google explicitly uses your information to advertise against you. Apple is not yet in that vertical.
iAd is a mobile advertising platform developed by Apple Inc. for its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad line of mobile devices allowing third-party developers to directly embed advertisements into their applications. Announced on April 8, 2010, iAd is part of Apple's iOS 4, originally slated for release on June 21, 2010, the actual date was changed to July 1, 2010.
Safari has 3rd party cookies turned off by default. And how many iAds have you seen?
Also iAds have quite strict requirements as to what kind of identifying information they receive from the device.
Google/Android doesn't have any qualms about giving every bit of information they can get to the advertisers, that's the main source of income for Google. Also, 3rd party cookies will not be turned off by default in any Google product ever.
since when is advertising strictly an adversarial arrangement?
Websites such as real estate websites are basically just ads, yet it still offers a service (namely discovery). trailers for movies are also ads but I still like watching them.
There's a lot of disgusting/misleading behaviour in advertising, but it's not strictly an Us vs. Them proposition.
Real estate websites feature the product obviously, the real estate. With Google's website, your eyeballs on adverts is the product, and it's in Google's interest to know what you like to give you relevant adverts.
When you are a visitor to a website, it's whether you are a customer vs product proposition.
iAd is a mobile advertising platform developed by Apple Inc. for its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad line of mobile devices allowing third-party developers to directly embed advertisements into their applications. Announced on April 8, 2010, iAd is part of Apple's iOS 4, originally slated for release on June 21, 2010, the actual date was changed to July 1, 2010.