Not blindly. Outside of marketing material there have been more meaningful signs and signals indicating that they did care. Including principled people working there, threatening to quit if the FBI got its way on San Bernardino, etc. This is new.
I work at Apple in engineering. User data privacy is a VERY big deal and something which is taken really seriously. It is not just marketing lip service.
Is Apple perfect? No, of course not. Are there things I think they should do better? Yes. E2E encryption with user keys stored in Secure Enclave, etc, etc. However, for Joe Consumer, I think they make the most secure, easiest to use platform.