Ah. I've been out of the ecosystem for so many years. It used to be simple on those platforms... :/

It’s an exaggeration to say it’s a pain point on Mac for most printers. I’m sure some aren’t supported by the standard flow, but that flow is literally “select your printer which is already identified, agree to download a driver and wait a bit”. It’s as painful as installing a web extension if you don’t have to go find it first.

Well, except your printer now has its own OS, and asks to be connected to the Internet so it can download security updates it wouldn't need if it wasn't connected to the internet.

Huh? This isn’t something I’ve ever heard of from Apple’s distribution of printer drivers. Neither of the Brother printers I’ve used since this system was put in place (Snow Leopard, widely regarded as the high water mark for macOS quality) have required or requested network access other than for availability. Are you talking about something specific that’s well documented or just being paranoid and sharing careless inference?

I was talking about the printers themselves. Back then you just worried about the drivers on your computer, now you have to keep in mind that your printer needs to update its firmware on its own.

But I don’t need to worry about either. My OS vendor distributes it and I trust their distribution model. My printer has no say at all.