Also the location is only accessible to you, the owner of the device. Not Apple or "random other people's iPhones". The engineering and thought that went into

Also the location is only accessible to you, the owner of the device. Not Apple or "random other people's iPhones". The engineering and thought that went into the whole thing to be useful but also privacy protecting is actually pretty impressive, and exactly the kind of thing we should be encouraging companies to do if we care about privacy. Especially since as you point out, you can still easily turn it off at any point if you want.