Apple is 100% correct. It’s the entire reason Android exists.

Then again, Apple also does a fair bit of data collection. I hate that Apple has been able to market themselves as some kind of bastion of privacy. They aren’t.

So Apple is not 100% correct. They are 50% correct because the second half of their claim is that Apple is somehow different and not tracking its users...

Actually, the reason Android exists isn't so one-dimensional.

• The company Android was initially concerned more with Microsoft dominating phones like they did computers at the time, before being bought by Google
• They created two prototype chains initially, one touch, one that was more akin to BlackBerry
• iPhone came out, they ditched the BlackBerry-esque one and focused on what became now Android

Google was mostly just doing what all tech companies were doing at the time, trying to compete in a mobile arms race for dominance. The data tracking was just a bonus. Appeasing shareholders is paramount. Look at how Apple created an Alexa speaker just because they had to as another example of this type of behavior.

Also, Apple actually has a long history of tracking user behavior that predates both Android and the iPhone.

Apple apps since some time shortly after the inception of OS X would (and likely still do) phone home to configuration.apple.com to send apple metrics on usage. Earlier variations of LittleSnitch could actually block this collection behavior.

Apple has since reconfigured the network stack to guarantee that direct encrypted connections to Apple are always possible above any VPN, or other type of network filter connection. So there's no way to prevent communication with Apple on an Apple product at all now short of keeping it off the Internet or blocking DNS to 17.* IP addresses, which would only work on a network one has control over.

I believe the reason Google acquired Android was to make sure that Apple didn't dominate the mobile device landscape, which would be a threat to their ad business. The data collection was just a nice side-effect, from their perspective.

All cell phones are tracking devices. Unless you faraday cage them. But yes, both apple and Android phones give out way more information than just that. And I definitely would not say that I would trust Apple more with data that I would Google.

Genuine question: in what ways do Apple track iOS users (that cannot be turned off)?

I’m of the viewpoint that most tracking can be rather easily be turned off, and that android plays in a totally other ballpark here. But I might very well be wrong.