In reply to a post by jchamier:

Ahh, my Mac's since 2010 have needed an Apple ID, so its actually newer on Windows than Mac.

Windows 8 was the first Windows to require an account, so yes a couple of years after your Mac, Took ages to find a way to get around it on Windows 8, I did at that point have a hotmail account for some reason.

Apple, Microsoft, Android, all recommend a cloud login. You can set up Win11 Pro without (Home is a pain) and many corporates use Win11 without cloud login.

Windows 10 took away the forced MS account and now they bring it back, never understand why they are forcing it on home versions and even pro versions of Windows 11. Even Apple don't force their Apple ID

The reason for the login is for those whom aren't confident about computers to offer services such as auto backup (iCloud Drive, OneDrive) and more secure login (e.g. via Windows Hello) than basic passwords. Soon everyone will use passkeys.

I don't agree that it has anything to do top help people who are not confident with computers. I don't have Auto backup on my phone, so I am certainly not going to have it on a computer. I don't use cloud storage, as I don't need to.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

You can update the OS without an Apple ID but, as far as I know, there is no way to update applications (or install new ones from the App Store) without an ID. Mac OS is far more restrictive in this respect than Windows.

This is the one problem i have with Mac OS I must admit, but a friend of mine told me a while back that it is possible to get around it as she doesn't have an Apple ID on her Mac pro.

To my mind you lose a huge amount of functionality in either Mac OS or Windows if you don’t have one of their accounts.

Not sure about Mac Os as I have not really used it much, but with Windows I have not lost any functionality by not having an MS account. People say this, and yet I have not had a MS account or Hotmail as it was then for years.

i almost ordered the Mac today, the Mini pro, but for some reason the discount did not follow me, so IO stopped before I paid for it. I think it may be because of some extensions on my browser or the VPN, so I will try again at some point and disable them