[mst]

Rover, I think, Apple never offered an iPhone or iPad with additonal memory card, some people were compalining about. I think 8 or 16GB  (with the first iPhones) are pretty ridiculous, given the price of the unit.

Right, iOS devices never had any card slots.

However, the smallest iPhone 2G had 4 GB, and by that time (10 years ago), the amount that was offered in the higher models should be seen in the context of that time. 16 GB was quite something back then.
 

But in Apple's very wet and weird dreams, people will use iCloud and buy their diskspace there. Meaning the devices will come with limited memory space and need to be online. This scenario frightens me - I don't see me as supplier of personal data for intransparent purposes.

This is not originally Apple's dream, nor is it uniquely their's. And clouds can primarily be used to synchronize data (not necessarily lots of data) between devices. Again, Google had that idea first (with Calendar, Contacts, Docs,...)
 
And given the amount of memory they offer in current models (up to 256 GB on iPhone, 512 GB in iPad), Apple does not seem to rely solely on selling their dream

Personally (warning, you might consider this a fanboy's defense talk), I never missed a card slot on any iOS device. iPhone and iPad regularly back up all data once they're on my home wifi (locally, not to the cloud), so I never had to fear loss of data.