You're right that it is orthogonal to the privacy promises Apple makes to its own users.

The moralistic and righteous undertone in their marketing material is questionable though given that these Apple services might not exist if Google didn't exploit Gemini app user data on Android the way it does.

That's fine with me. Users have a choice here. In fact, it's a big improvement over the search deal with Google where Apple sends its own users directly to Google.