Wut? Besides that you can uninstall whatever you don't want or even replace the operating system with a bare android or whatever else you want, you're forgetting about Fairphone, Murena, and probably others. I had an apple phone for work once and it's not like it doesn't come with a lot of bloat preinstalled and tries to get your permission to snitch on where you are and what you do. It has toggles for some of the things but you can only do what apple lets you do. Also consider daily use, where you will install third party software to get stuff done: you're not better off with the necessarily commercial software from apple's store than with pretty much anything you can get on f-droid and other open source stores

Recommending Apple for privacy only makes sense for those who don't actually care and just want the feel-good premium brand