It was becoming plain a few years ago (by 2015 at the latest) that Apple didn't have the aptitude to compete in big Data or machine learning. It was very clever

It was becoming plain a few years ago (by 2015 at the latest) that Apple didn't have the aptitude to compete in big Data or machine learning. It was very clever of them to bet on privacy - the one strategy that has little need for big Data and ML. The other big bet is that something might happen to convince users that privacy is good. We'll see how that plays out - users aren't particularly bothered by Facebook revelations as their DAUs attest. Kids are growing up with microphones in their bedrooms (Amazon echo dot for kids) so privacy will be a deeply erodes concept ~15 years from now (if it isn't already).