> This is incredibly misleading. Apple has been mostly criticized for allowing apps to collect excessive user data--for example, apps could access contacts at first without permission. It has been slowly shutting down these methods, as the realization has sunk in the the more open environment of Macs and PCs is just not appropriate for mobile phones. For example, apps in iOS 13 cannot access bluetooth or Wifi information by default, since it was being used to infer location.

Yep, the tech world has a short memory :) I distinctly remember Apple caught red-handed slurping GPS data from their users.

> The tracking ID was Apple throwing a bone to ad industry and app makers, when it shut down far more precise ways of tracking users.

Unless I'm mistaken, it's still much more precise than any form of web tracking.