Are we forgetting the actual model names?
Macbook Air - Mine is A2337. They do have arbitrary model numbers for all of their stuff too. Guaranteed they do the same thing with their pens, pencils, and other stuff. It’s just that most consumers rarely pay attention to them. To be fair though, most of the apple model numbers I’ve seen are similar to what I said above which is not nearly as bad as how they do TVs lol.
Yeah, wireshark is a good start.
Something else to consider but requires a different device would be to add a firewall (something like a Protectcli device running OPNsense) between your modem and router and set it up to block the outgoing request and see if it breaks something, or at the very least if you’re concerned about security, you’re blocking that specific traffic while you troubleshoot the cause using wireshark or some other method.