He's deeply bought into the Apple ecosystem. He noted his Macbook arrived while he was fighting his account ban. I'm guessing iphone, ipad, thousands in music and movies on itunes, at least hundreds in apps, and an apple account required for all of it.
As a Google user I'm not in tremendously better shape, but my PCs don't require Google to function, and at least I could load a different ROM on my phone if needed. Not that Android is tremendously useful outside the Google ecosystem.
> Macs don't require an Apple account to function either.
i helped someone setup their macbook air M1 a few days ago. the least i can say is that they were asked to create an apple ID and they were asked for a phone number.
those steps were not skippable.
i was disturbed to say the least because i was recommending them to skip those steps and enter that information when they felt comfortable. an OS should only care about the user account. but two accounts and external identification were needed in this case.
Can you get os updates without an apple account? My Mac always bugs me for my apple ID when updating things. I'd be happy to get rid of that, maybe it's for apps.
Pre-Catalina, major OS version updates were distributed as apps on the Mac App Store, and required an Apple ID to download. You're right that this isn't the case today, though.
What if you set up a Mac with an Apple account, Apple permabans you for something, then you forget your password and want to wipe and restore your Mac?
