The fact that their competitors are as bad or worse in this regard does not make Apple saints - and this has all the hallmarks of an intentional addition to position Apple apps differently from the others, which is a classic Apple move.
Compromise in security and prviacy clearly has been deemed worth by someone at Apple before the stink was raised.
This kind of black and white thinking is very impractical and self-defeating, except maybe for RMS, to remind us what we should strive for.
For most of us, the real world decision is to either work with a company which is actively working on undermining privacy or with one which is trying to improve things.
In the real world, Apple still gets to have their business and people work with them, but enough stink is raised to both externally and privately to get them to change their decision. Which they have evidently done here, so working as intended. Reputation damage is a thing if it involves conversations with other F100 companies.
This particular debacle is one of the reasons why $CurrentCorpo I am occasionally working with decided to skip Big Sur until much later in the lifecycle - not the only one, though.
Compromise in security and prviacy clearly has been deemed worth by someone at Apple before the stink was raised.