They aren't just a black box, tinkering with them actually has negative consequences. On Android getting root access results in Safetynet attestation failing and on iOS you can't even get root at all unless you are happy to run some bins from questionable sources. Things are very different for youths. As someone else stated to tinker in the way you mentioned means getting an Arduino or some kind of tinker-friendly SBC.
I think it's true that owners of Apple products are more affluent so if I were to put on my evil capitalist hat and could collect this point of data, I would certainly at least test differential pricing just to see if it works.
Is there some kind of algorithmic key pressing magic that goes on in order to produce said characters
The umbrella term for the software used for East Asian Language input is "Input Method Editor." IMEs exist for languages besides CJK also, such as for Vietnamese. Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_method
int main()
{
const char c = 'c';
char* pc;
char** ppc = &pc;
const char** pcc = ppc; // Error: not the same as cv-unqualified char**, no implicit conversion.
*pcc = &c;
*pc = 'C'; // If the erroneous assignment above is allowed, the const object “c” may be modified.
}
That's a really reductionist take, I can pay taxes with the currency of my country of residence.