It's really not some mythical user, man. I just laid out the two main methods we were comparing of updating firmware. One process requires literally 0 user intervention after device setup. The other require the user to intervene. In what world is the process where the end user has to do literally nothing to get updates inferior to any process that requires intervention? It's not that the device has Internet that's the issue. It's that there's nothing respecting privacy! We're on the same side but you wanna...what...make it illegal to do OTA updates because internet connectivity for devices is intrinsically invasive somehow? I just don't get it. Your position doesn't make sense.

Make an app

And now the app pulls gelocation data of the user and takes the data on the device and uploads it through the app because no privacy laws.

Why does using a USB stick to flash the firmware equate with chewing your own food, but using an app to update the firmware not? They didn't compile the app from code!

there is no compelling use case for constant internet connection for these types of appliances

I literally just gave you one. The ability to push out OTA updates for bugs greatly reduces the complexity of maintaining technical support and development to support legacy features. I don't know, maybe instantly patching a critical Bluetooth vulnerability to protect users privacy via OTA updates is compelling enough ?Do they have to do it that way? No. The device could just get it via BT from the phone app. Basically the same thing as the device itself doing it.

But the privacy issue still remains even if we remove WiFi from the fucking vacuum and then just let the phone app have WiFi access instead.

Did I make my point better? Removing internet access to the device, doesn't remove the privacy concern. It just moves it somewhere else. And yes I know there absolutely is a way to do firmware updates in some privacy respecting way, but if you maintain that a 0 step process is less preferable to the majority of users than any process that requires multiple steps... Then I don't know. Interact with users more? There's plenty of boomers peck typing their way around the internet.

I admit you have points, friend. I share your concern about privacy. But come on... We got where we are in part because the general users don't give a flying fuck or even think about privacy.