You used to be able to buy songs on iTunes and burn them to CD. Why would the expectation for movies be any different?

Bullshit, it's perfectly fine and legal to refuse to give companies your address or SSN.

You can refuse to give it. But intentionally giving a false address with the intention of being able to defraud the company by not paying a bill you owe them is fraud.

Google syphons all your email data and uses it for their very profitable ad targeting business. The cost of providing email service is miniscule, especially nowadays. Ad profits are at record highs. They've done their math for sure. Saying that they somehow got roped into subsidizing a public service is not even close to reality.

No. This is a bad solution. You can't blame consumers for not making the right choice when there's a sea of irreparable junk and a few niche repairable options on the market. Reparability should be the default expectation.

Last I checked the Epic Games Store doesn't even support Linux - the new gaming frontier.

Unfortunately Steam decks have been out of stock for a while. The AI slop Apocalypse ruined the consumer computing market with chip shortages.

No surprise there, Discord sells user data to Meta and X.

Does it still require wiping your drive and enabling developer mode to install software outside the Play Store like ChromeOS does? DOA if so.

I believe you can run Linux in a container and use apt-get.

https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/setup

Using applications with a GUI isn't a very enjoyable experience in that environment.

iPhones will transmit bluetooth beacons even if turned off. Fortunately the battery goes completely flat after a couple of weeks or so and then they no longer do. Unfortunately this is not very healthy for the battery.

Indeed. Never spend your own money on work related expenses. If your job requires a phone, they need to provide one.