The thing with cloud and with anything related to it, anything that connects to the internet somehow... is that, unless it's open source and the servers decentralized, you are always trusting SOMEONE. Sure, Apple might make their best to ensure nobody – but them – have access to your data... but Apple controls all the end points. It controls the updates your iPhone receives, it controls the servers where this happens. Like, they are so many opportunities for them to find what you are doing. It reminds me of this article "Web-based cryptography is always snake oil"
https://www.devever.net/~hl/webcrypto
And to be fair, this doesn't apply only to this case. Even the data you have stored locally, Apple could access it if they wanted, they sure have power to do it if they so wish or were ordered by the government. They might have done it already and just didn't told anyone for obvious reasons. So, I would argue the best you could say is that it's private in the sense that only Apples knows/can know what you are doing rather than a larger number of entities .
Which, you could argue it's a win when the alternatives will leak your data to many more parts... But still far away from being this unbreakable cryptography that it's portrayed it to be.
https://www.devever.net/~hl/webcrypto
And to be fair, this doesn't apply only to this case. Even the data you have stored locally, Apple could access it if they wanted, they sure have power to do it if they so wish or were ordered by the government. They might have done it already and just didn't told anyone for obvious reasons. So, I would argue the best you could say is that it's private in the sense that only Apples knows/can know what you are doing rather than a larger number of entities .
Which, you could argue it's a win when the alternatives will leak your data to many more parts... But still far away from being this unbreakable cryptography that it's portrayed it to be.