Android allows the user to prevent data from going to third parties as well. The difference is it also allows the user to prevent data from from going to the OS manufacturer. This is strictly greater privacy.
You are wrong about GPS location requests:
"By enabling Location Services for your devices, you agree and consent to the transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of your location data and location search queries by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based and road traffic-based products and services."
It will also send your location to Apple when no app is requesting your location:
"If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations."
Unlike on Android, you cannot get your location without sending this data to Apple:
"To use features such as these, you must enable Location Services on your iPhone"
This is not so hard to reverse given that Apple also has your location tied to your identity from other Apple services you use. Once you match that location to the encrypted user, who is often seen requesting their location data from work or home, you get the encrypted user's location data identified.
Compare to Android, where you don't have to send your location data anywhere to get your GPS location. iOS location privacy is strictly worse.
You also ignored the fact that every app install gets reported to Apple tied to your identity, which is arguably even more egregious.
Also you seem to be just wrong. iOS doesn’t inform Apple when apps make GPS location requests.