For the smartphones I mostly agree. Even Pixels, although easily unlockable and rootable, make you jump through hoops if you want to use things like banking.
For PCs, there are still options available. Fractal have cases with no RGB and even metal side panels (as opposed to tempered glass ones) if that’s your thing. Noctua and be quiet! still make non-RGB fans and coolers.
iPhones are far too big and have too many huge cameras for me.
It’s the same outside of the Apple ecosystem too. It’s as if everything is tied together. If I want a high end phone with nice build quality and a good, high resolution + high refresh rate display, I’m usually forced to also pay for 3-4 different cameras that I might never use. If I want to constrain myself to a more reasonable price, I’m limited to either a last year flagship or a current midrange model.
There are several advantages to not having them: without all the extra parts needed to support these features you can make the phone thinner (thickness is traditionally a key marketing point for smartphones)
I’d be pretty happy with a phone that’s 1.5x thicker than normal if it has a 6000-7000 mAh battery.
Depends on the implementation. If you decline, it’s either 1) no cookies are written at all and you get promoted again the next time you visit that site or 2) a single cookie is written only remembering that you declined the prompt.