I understand the argument that the lesser of two bad options is the better one.

The massive issue in all of this is digital identity.

Everyone is a citizen of a private corporation without any rights or access points to their digital identity.

Humans rely on our digital identity (email accounts, iCloud, google, etc) for nearly everything.

In many ways, it's like the equivalent of using our license or other ID in physical spaces.

Except, humans are relying on digital identities provided as digital citizens of corporations (Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc), whereby they do no have teh same recourse that official access points of data do.

If at any given time, the majority of the identity providers are generally or ultimately not on the side of the identity holders (human) wrt to their inalienable rights.

There's no easy answer for this. Convenience has been used as a massive tradeoff for security for 10-15 years to the point that most people don't know better, or that there were and can be better options.

Downplaying the fact that the single change of a few sentences could change for worse the promises any corporation makes (it's not entitled to serve the user's needs first, after all).

Security and Privacy in Apple certainly seem to be better, but are not the best they could be.

Privacy and security, especially where it comes to protecting people from increasing threats online including AI bots, is not going to come from corporations alone, they haven't been able to build or roll them out while they learn at the expense of people.

There's no answer being pointed to, only that Apple being the only vendor with some promises isn't very good at all.