> The privacy is more of a market position thing than it is a political thing.

It is a market position, but companies do have some choice in which market positions they choose to take. And I wouldn't underestimate the effect of the personal views of the CEO in that.

> and it helps deprive Google and other services from monetizing their customer base.

The payment Apple gets from Google for being the default search might help explain this. It would be hard to turn down the sums Apple gets.

https://9to5mac.com/2025/09/03/just-one-word-in-the-google-a...

If you’re referring to their AI services being ‘woefully behind’, that’s just a market sector that they’ve chosen not to focus too much effort on. That was a sensible gamble too, given how unpredictable that sector is five years after it was released.

I’m not sure what else they are behind on frankly, as their current offerings have been extremely stable from day dot.

How many products has Google released and killed in the past 20 years? Apple managed to land on a good thing with Apple iTunes and iPhotos in the early oughts, and managed to transition those core services into Apple Music and iCloud with little to no disruption to users. iCloud is generally a pretty predictable service that delivers on a core set of user requirements very well.

Also, thief productivity suite isn’t meant to completely replace Office, and for a free package, it meets many users needs perfectly fine.

>but is woefully behind on the software

iOS is ahead on software security compared to Android, Windows, Desktop Linux, etc.