What @aardy said, with the addition that not being able to identify your IP address is different from not being able to identify you.
A VPN:
- Prevents your ISP from being able to tell what you’re doing online (other than, obviously, connecting to a VPN
) - Lumps all of your Internet traffic together on a single IP with a number of other users, making it a more difficult for data aggregators to sort out
- As a side benefit of the lumping your Internet traffic onto a different IP, it also allows you to bounce your IP around to different countries in case that’s a benefit to you
A VPN does not
- Prevent browser fingerprinting
- Prevent you from being identified when you log into a website (username/password)
- Prevent cookies being stored on your computer that can potentially identify you
The issue here is that apparently while Apple does do the VPN stuff above for Safari and Mail, there are incidental cases (passkeys) where your computer makes requests that don’t go through the private relay - which leaks your IP.
If the VPN benefits listed above are important to you, you need a VPN. Ideally a VPN with a “kill switch” that blocks all Internet traffic if the VPN disconnects. The second category of stuff is probably the larger privacy issue, which isn’t helped by either Apple Private Relay or a VPN.