Man, I really hope this is just a temporary peak of insanity in the industry history and a total change is going to happen soon. You know, there were times in history when horrible, bizarre things were norms, and somehow the societies overcame those. This is our only hope.

> Given that I connect the iPad to the Mac via a USB-C cable, it's not clear why iCloud is required at all. They're just intentionally crippling their expensive devices.

I believe they just want to make you get used to that so one day you would't even think about using any of your devices/apps without iCloud. Their vision probably is to make all the devices merely interfaces to iCloud and to make "offline usage" sound as ridiculous as using a toaster without electricity.

That's pretty fucky, especially since their 2FA doesn't go through SMS for me (it's a system popup). FWIW, there are (or were) other apps which provided similar functionality without going through Apple's hoops.

> Side Car requires 2FA with a phone number

Note that once you have at least one phone number added, you can switch it to be device-based instead, where it will send 2FA codes directly to any Apple device you're logged into (there's a little system popup) and the phone number becomes strictly a backup for if all devices are unavailable. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204915

> Given that I connect the iPad to the Mac via a USB-C cable, it's not clear why iCloud is required at all.

Sidecar is primarily designed for wireless usage, and there's something behind-the-scenes where it's using the iCloud account to sync identity info so that that user doesn't have to manually set up any cross-device authentication stuff.

I don't find this a convincing rationale. I already had to jump through hoops with an authentication code to make my iPad "trust" my Mac before it appeared at all in Side Car.

Now that it does appear, I get a pop-up when clicking on the iPad income, saying I can't use it because the account doesn't have 2FA set up. Nowhere in the advertising for the device was there a disclaimer that a legacy phone number was required to use the features.

Your data line still has a phone number. I know on T-Mobile they only block sending SMS on data lines, it can still receive. Maybe your service works like that.

Sounds like that would work for services that send a verification code via SMS and ask you to enter it elsewhere, but not services that demand a reply. Luckily most 2FA is the former, but I've seen the latter with things like verifying flagged credit card transactions (although they have non-SMS alternatives).

With this new MagSafe charger it looks like the end goal is to remove one more port. Plugging in may not be an option soon. The 2nd gen pencil charges without plugging in for instance. If you can set up a US Google voice number you cold try to receive SMS there or hangouts. Maybe set it with a unique Google email to prevent hacking attempts.

Continuity - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204681

Apple Wireless Direct Link - https://owlink.org/wiki/

I have an iPad that sat on a shelf for several years, and now I can't use it all because Apple deleted the account that it's linked to.

You can put in the number of any cell phone you have access to, and get the code form the screen.

Would I later lose access to all my purchases on all my devices if I didn't have access to that phone number anymore?