I'd say it was far more private and secure, but not any more after the recent changes in their business model and privacy policy where they have decided to integrate it with a users Facebook data and other external data they collect.
A simple example to illustrate this is WhatsApp Business ( https://business.whatsapp.com/ ) that allows businesses in India to use WhatsApp to communicate, market and even sell to other Whatsapp users. Businesses who use this service are now sharing data of their customers with meta / WhatsApp (without the permission of their customers in many cases) and so now they are able to collect data of retailers and businesses whose services users use (and in some cases even know what they purchase). Ofcourse, a common issue (that anyone could have predicted with such "integration) is that WhatsApp users now face a new issue - spam (WhatsApp now a spam factory, 1 in 2 Indian swamped with promotional messages: report - https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/whatsapp-now-a... ).
(Note that Apple iMessage is indeed insecure if you use it on multiple devices or iCloud backup, as in such use cases Apple stores your message unencrypted in their cloud).
The reason Mark Zuckerberg's WhatsApp is not "far better for privacy-concerned users thanks to its end-to-end encryption" than Tim Cook's Messages app is that Cook has some shame.
It's safer to hitch a ride in a rickety old VW 'Bug' with Michael Schumacher than it is to hitch a ride in reliable new Volvo with Ted Bundy.
Smells like a cheap shot of desperation given recent events and Apple’s rumored AR/VR/MR entry. If anything, Whatsapp’s competitor is Signal and Telegram, not iMessage, since they are cross platform and fulfill the same niche internationally.
Although of course trying to compete with Signal on privacy grounds would be a fool’s errand.
A simple example to illustrate this is WhatsApp Business ( https://business.whatsapp.com/ ) that allows businesses in India to use WhatsApp to communicate, market and even sell to other Whatsapp users. Businesses who use this service are now sharing data of their customers with meta / WhatsApp (without the permission of their customers in many cases) and so now they are able to collect data of retailers and businesses whose services users use (and in some cases even know what they purchase). Ofcourse, a common issue (that anyone could have predicted with such "integration) is that WhatsApp users now face a new issue - spam (WhatsApp now a spam factory, 1 in 2 Indian swamped with promotional messages: report - https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/whatsapp-now-a... ).
(Note that Apple iMessage is indeed insecure if you use it on multiple devices or iCloud backup, as in such use cases Apple stores your message unencrypted in their cloud).