Apple has always been the more stringent about remote work, in terms of maintaining secrecy by keeping its workers on-premises, so this is the least surprising move.
Even regardless of the confidentiality aspect (and we all know how Apple feels about that), for a decent number of folks, they might need some decently expensive equipment that wouldn't make sense to buy for everyone individually.
At least according to how I perceive the company, the folks coming from that side of the business really run things, and so they bring the in office culture with them even to the pure software businesses.
Obviously this is a lot of speculation, but it seems like a reasonable way to explain why they are the way they are.
Imagine trying to make something intuitive and comfortable. How can you even judge that remotely? First you have to ship it around(or else make tons more units), then hope video quality suffices to see everything.
In person you can get 20 people in a room and let them interact with widget x. See how they behave, hear feedback, etc.
Yes, even wireless stuff. You don't even need a portable faraday cage (but could buy one). Actually interfering is what is illegal, not just making random test electronics.
I worked for Samsung for a little bit. And even there with operating system basically borrowed from Google, only very small portion of people ever needed to use any special tools. We got some prototypes but the one time we needed to do anything was to desolder and solder again a battery for a prototype watch. And that because a mistake (charging controller circuit badly designed, not powering properly from external power when battery drained). We had one guy do this for the rest of the team and everybody else was just working on software.
I had to go into the office a few times over the pandemic to use some testing equipment, but that was 7 or 8 days in the last 2 years?