It's really not, though. You don't even need an Apple account to set up a Mac.

I pay $3/month to Apple in exchange for full-quality backups of decades of photos, but I could easily stop doing that, or switch to another provider, if I wanted to. (I don't, because $3/month is extremely fair for what I get.) I've never paid for any other Apple service and likely never will. The OS never, ever nags me about services - compare that to Windows!

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HDBaseT 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Whilst you don't "need" an Apple account to setup a Mac, using a Macbook without an account may not be viable for a lot of people.

First and foremost, you cannot install any applications through the primary method of app installation, which is the App Store.

You also cannot use certain applications like iMovie (which is pre-installed) without an Apple Account.

MacOS will always prompt you in the Settings to sign in with iCloud. Opt into Betas, including Public and Developer Betas are not possible without an iCloud account.

The Apple land is miles better than the Microsoft land, which you aptly point out though.

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vizzier 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> or switch to another provider

Can you though? Its been a few years since I've been on apple, but being able to get anything but icloud native support in other apps was basically non-existent. Compared to android where it gives you a plethora of choice out of the box.

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rafram 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes - they're already on my computer, so any full-disk backup service will back them up by default. There's an option to purge them from disk and download from iCloud on demand, but you don't need to use it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111762

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vizzier 6 hours ago | parent [-]

ah fair, I was thinking on the iphone, but in fairness this is a thread about a laptop

	▲	fizwidget 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Even on an iPhone you can back up your library to Google Photos or other services. You just can’t do so directly through Apple’s Photos app.

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nicoburns 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's different on mobile (iOS/Android) where individual apps need special support for cloud providers. On a mac everything is just a file for most apps, so all the cloud providers work by default.