It’s even worse than you think. Once you’ve tried an iPhone or iPad, you’ll immediately realize that the App Store isn’t the only compulsion.
There’s one thing that shows you immediately what the iOS system is. When you buy an iOS device, you have to do a device activation via the Internet in setup. It’s generally not possible to set up and use iOS devices locally. Internet Compulsion. There is no way around it yet, not even with jailbreak (because jailbreak can only be done after device activation).
The jailbreak scene is a controlled scene anyway, even if Apple is only indirectly involved. You can do some things more after the jailbreak, like local app installation via file, customize the system design, Tweaks etc.
But basically nothing more than playing into a proprietary system where only Apple has control anyway. Apple knows that people, or humanity in general, want a freedom system, but the illusion of the jailbreak scene makes users with little experience believe that this is enough.
What Apple does with this data I don’t know, but one thing is for sure. Apple knows how many iOS devices are activated worldwide.
I expect Apple will add this method for its Mac devices in the future if they use the ARM CPU. Then Apple can restrict it even further. This also automatically means that you will never be able to set up and use these Mac devices locally again, as is the case with iPhones and iPads.
In case you don’t know it yet, even the first iPhone and iPad cannot be set up and used without the Internet. Apple has been doing this for more than 10 years for their mobile systems. This also applies to the other iOS based systems for Apple Watch, Apple TV etc.
I could imagine that Google will make the first step in their systems, and that is for Fuchsia. In setup, add a forced device activation over the Internet, similar to iOS. In Android itself I don’t believe this, but maybe in a future Android One version.