Literally the moment you buy a Mac. Apple hardware comes with 3 month trials of various subscriptions, and you get a notification about it. They try to get you to sign up in hopes you’ll forget to cancel.

When I bought my iPhone 17 the sales associate even tried to pitch signing up for the trial in person as he guided me through the purchase process.

When you cancel the trial it ends it immediately instead of ending it at the end of your trial period, a dark pattern designed to encourage you to forget to end your trial.

Apple devices also nag you about buying AppleCare in the system preferences.

I’ve never been hounded about my Microsoft account. Be specific. When does this happen? Yes, you need one to set up Windows 11 (just like a Mac and especially iOS are basically useless without an Apple account anyway), but after that I’ve never been hounded around anything related to it.

Never had problems figuring out how to open stuff in Windows. No idea what you’re saying.

Most of these extreme claims about Windows seem to come from people who don’t even use the OS regularly and have forgotten about the ways in which macOS does many of the same commercial OS practices.