Apple's long-term play with iOS is to shut all competing ad networks out of the data flow that iPhones generate. This is not solely for privacy reasons. We know Apple runs their own ads in the App Store, and they do collect data on those ads, which they conveniently do not consider to be "tracking" because it doesn't cross an organizational boundary.

And to be clear, every other big tech company operates on this same logic. "Tracking" to both Apple and Google is this really specific technical definition rooted in the same-origin policy of web browsers, in the same way that "malware" to Apple is "anything we didn't sign, including useful developer tools, third-party JIT compilers, and games that won't pay us 30% of their microtransaction sales". In fact, this sort of "we'll protect you from the competition's - and ONLY the competition's - malfeasance" bullshit is why Google isn't allowed to block third-party cookies. The UK CMA is legally enshrining third-party cookies - at least in Google browsers - because all of Google's own privacy posturing with that was just to shut off the data flow in Chrome.

Tracking how many times someone requested an API endpoint while using the App Store seems acceptable to me. Very comparable to server side logging which I also don't have any problem with. I don't do it much anyways, I have installed the apps I use when I got the phone and never opened the App Store again.