I'm sure they do collect data but not to the point that they hamper functionality. They still focus first and foremost on usability, functionality whereas Google focus on collecting data, serving ads and then on functionality.

But yeah, there is no doubt in my mind that they both collect as much as they can.

Google gets nearly all of its revenue from targeted advertising, and Apple does not. Apple has an incentive to restrict or completely deny third-party data collection, because they’ve made privacy a major part of their brand marketing and there is major reputational risk to Apple for being caught lying about this. Apple’s “Ask App Not To Track” feature made such a measurable dent in the revenue of various surveillance tech companies that they complained about it, loudly, including Meta paying for a full-page ad in the New York Times about it.

There are multiple objective reasons to believe that Apple is a more trustworthy actor here than other companies, including vulgar capitalistic reasons.

You can just say “pfft, wow, you really believe that?”, I guess, but if that’s your position there’s no reason to argue about this with you.