Yes and I wonder for the cases where people claim it did require a connection if it actually did or there were "just" dark patterns that made it appear that way

Yes and I wonder for the cases where people claim it did require a connection if it actually did or there were "just" dark patterns that made it appear that way - e.g. it may be that an internet connection is required for some smart feature setup flow but you can skip out of that early by declining the boilerplate all-your-rights-are-belong-to-us legalese that most people just blindly agree to.