This may sound quaint, but back in the day, retailers and service providers knew their customers. In market segments where you can't just buy everything online, some still do. I'm on first-name basis with lots of people I buy things or services from in my small city. And honestly, I can get better service if they actually keep track of some info.
I have to get my car an annual safety check. If I forget, and the sticker is super out of date, I could get a ticket or something. Fortunately, I have a really great mechanic - so great that when I first started taking cars to him a decade or so ago, he was "just" a mechanic, and he now co-owns the service station. Great guy, seriously, and a good dad too; I run into him and his daughter sometimes around town. So I take the car to his station every year. Similarly, I have a dentist I go to. Years ago, we used to take turns driving each other's kids to school, so I've known his whole family for almost a decade now. Back then I didn't have dental insurance, but when I needed a dentist, he was the one I called, and when I got insurance, I stuck with him. He knows his stuff, and his support staff are all friendly too; his wife works the front office and his daughter that I used to drive to school does X-rays now. Of course, since I go there, my whole family goes there. So... real small-town Americana stuff, ya know?
Every time I see the dentist, we decide when my next appointment will be. Sometimes I have to change it due to work obligations. But about a week ahead of time, I get a postcard in the mail reminding me, and a couple days ahead of time, they give me a call to confirm. They're really good at this, and they apply it across their entire customer base, so they know ahead of time when somebody's cancelling/rescheduling an appointment and freeing up a slot that they can use for somebody who needs urgent work done.
On the other hand, the service station just puts a sticker on the inside of my windshield to remind me what month or mileage my next oil change should be at. They don't give me any kind of reminder about my safety check coming up for renewal - even though I consistently go to them, when I could go almost anywhere to get it done. On the rare occasions that my wife gets the car fueled (she isn't the do-it-herself kind), people at other stations will point out to her that it's coming up for renewal.
Scaling up a bit, you've probably heard the story about how Target knows us better than we know ourselves - guy notices that his regular ads from Target suddenly have a lot of baby-oriented things in them, wonders why, only later discovers that his daughter is preggers. Target knows what I buy and spits out coupons that are at least more relevant than Google ads. Safeway does likewise, and will even give me special offers above and beyond their "club card" prices on things they know I like (or think I might).
So if Apple collects that kind of data - customer records, usage records, behavioral stuff - for the purpose of providing better service to me, please forgive me if I don't immediately pick up a torch and a pitchfork and storm 1 Infinite Loop with the rest of the villagers.
Not to say that Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and the rest never do anything of the kind - right off the top of my head, "People you may know" features are actually fairly helpful - but the fact that Apple actually has a substantial "brick and mortar" retail presence that sells large amounts of physical, kickable things seems to help keep them from completely forgetting what "customer service" is about.