>It's interesting that the researchers assumed turning off the transmission of device analytics would also turn off the transmission of all app analytics, whether from Apple

Given that the app store comes installed by default and can't be uninstalled, it seems fairly reasonable to assume that it's part of the OS. Therefore it's not unreasonable to assume that disabling "device analytics" would also disable app store analytics.

Per the article, other vendors do just that: “He and his research partner ran similar tests in the past looking at analytics in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. In both of those apps, Mysk says the data isn’t sent when analytics settings are turned off.”

Analytics has got nothing to do with software improvement. Analytics is crap. iOS is crap.

The purpose of analytics is firstly to recreate bugs, and also to identify cases where users are getting stuck or frustrated. An example of the latter might a user repeatedly going back to the same screen again and again because they can’t find something.

I know you don’t care if there’s a real reason or not, but others here might.

Lockdown mode didn't exist on iOS 14 sadly

Lockdown Mode has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

Your assumption is that Lockdown Mode doesn't change the scope of telemetry data sent back to Apple, but we don't know this, which is why testing it would be interesting.

Your comment shows that you have misunderstood the purpose of Lockdown Mode.