I don't believe this is Apple's fault alone (not mentioning google would be a massive omission and everyone else would like to track you too but just doesn't have the scale). But what is being done with phone tracking is much more than just cookies
With the vast majority of our data tied to our IRL identity (thanks Facebook) with the express goal of causing us to do things IRL (consume product) with a very easy path to abuse (are you an activist, LE just needs to compel data from advertisers) - this seems like a very naive view in current year.
That was true a decade ago, but time flies.
Where you browse from, what you look at, who you talk to.
All collated, filtered and condensed into a picture of you. All websites using a unique identifier to trace _you_ the individual across all visited sites.
Web tracking is much more pervasive than just knowing what you've read. It's a huge picture of you and it does follow your location, habits, impressions and other things in the real.
Don’t try to equivocate this away. The technology to enable it is software; software is everywhere. We can use WiFi to echo locate people in buildings. We know what we’re doing in technology.
HUMANS are paranoid by default in order to survive. We’ve seen again and again in history; new technology goes straight into agency control militarization. Don’t be naive.
We’re all doing it because we all watch each other normalize it. Mirror neurons and social obligations; sign up, sign in, consume and let us collect your metrics.