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 tha

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.