Interesting. I would have thought always that yes, if I'm moving an image around, its metadata goes with it unless I've specifically taken steps to strip it. I guess we've all had different introductions to this stuff.
Coincidentally, I have asked some non-technical people exactly this question. All of the people I asked didn't even understand that there was anything other than "my picture" in an image file. I would guess that if you pressed a lay-person to explain how Apple shows a map of where your photos were taken, they would guess that the information was stored separately.