Apple can (and likely will) say they won't do it and then do it anyway. It's a proprietary platform. They already have it, now. All they are claiming is an excuse not to be caught in a certain way they wouldn't like at a later point.
"Oh, nothing will happen to this [corrupt politician|naughty rich guy|corporation doing a thing I don't like], because they're all [bad thing]. It's all over already." :facepalm:
(Also, I couldn't read the original article because my work thinks it's spreading malware or something so I'm really only referring to the fatalism thing here, not Apple.)
Here is a true story for you:
Company X claimed users voice commands never left their devices. Then someone leaked recordings of people having sex, commiting crimes, etc recorded from X devices. This was brought up by media. For every concerned user there were ten apologist trying to justify this behaviour and a week later everyone forgot this ever happened.