Do you mean that, after consenting to and signing into iCloud, all of iCloud's feature are enabled by default?
If you aren’t using iCloud for any of this, why use it at all? I believe you can still use an iPhone without an iCloud account, can’t you? Without any cloud sync, I’m not sure what the value is, just sign out.
I’m sure you’d lose the ability to download apps, but most of those are also using iCloud to sync data.
For what it’s worth, Apple seems fairly decent about not opting users in to new stuff. When they released Messages syncing via iCloud, I had to explicitly turn it on for my various devices. The same was true for several other things.
Nope, You have to have an apple account tied to a physical phone number or you can't sign in on the device or use it at all and they opt you in to the 5GB free plan and yes, the 30 sliders is apps but that doesn't alter the fact that I want to be asked before they exfiltrate my data, technology should exist to serve the user and part of that (at least in my opinion) is respecting privacy.
Yes you can sign out and you can untoggle the boxes but that is rather my point, it's opt out not opt in.
I don't want default exfiltration of data from my devices to a faceless American corporation without that been my choice.