New EAX15 Mesh Extender - I have a few questions

Hello, this is my first post. Although I am a long time Netgear user! For over 2 decades, I have used two of their cable modems, some Wi-Fi routers, Wi-Fi adapters and many of their venerable 4, 8, and 16 port switches for the home! The EAX15 is the latest Netgear hardware to add to my list!

First of all, it works great! I mean, my network setup is fairly simple and kind of old. But it works very well for extending my old 802.11n 2.4 GHz network just fine! I was worried that it may not support that old stuff...

Firmware:1.0.3.36

Not explicitly listed on the configuration website mywifiext.local (why?)...  but it's up to date and Netgear's site says 1.0.3.36.

Model: "EAX15-100NAS"

That's written on UPC code portion of the box above serial number, MAC and so forth numbers. The forum suggested there might be a V2 or V3 version of EAX15, but I don't see that anywhere. I guess it's just EAX15.

So I have a few questions:

1. Being an old user of home network appliances, I was able to quickly plug my computer into the Ethernet jack of the EAX15 and configure the "conventional" way as expected. The IP was a bit different, but that was easy to figure out. To my dismay, I noticed that documentation neglects telling users about this capability and instructs them to install the Nighthawk App. I installed the app and noticed it wanted me to create an Internet account and provide information to Netgear not relevant for the local network device ... like, Location? OK, maybe it's for Wi-Fi regulatory domain. But still... why wouldn't you document the "old fashion" way to do this? And why would you require an Internet account and collect lots of data from our phones for a strictly local network appliance?
2. This is probably a dumb question. But why can't this product simply amplify or repeat a signal on specific frequencies? Why do you need a man-in-the-middle computer to serve simultaneously as an access point and wireless client? This device is way more complicated in functionality than I thought it would be.
3. I use Adguardhome to protect my elderly father from scams and malware (and helpless devices). I logged into it today and noticed that my EAX15 queries netgear.com about 200 times per hour. What exactly is my strictly local network device communicating with Netgear?

I've attached s screenshot of part of my adguardhome statistics page for context.

Anyway, I'm otherwise very pleased with the device. It works great! Good job Netgear!