The idea that they were doing this maliciously never made sense anyway, customers who haven't upgraded in a while might be the least lucrative audience to target.
- opens to a full-page Apple Music subscription service ad on first run.
- search functionality defaults to “Apple Music” instead of “Local Library” (or “iTunes Store”) even when the user has no active subscription.
- Apple Music subscription upsell banner ad along the bottom of the search results screen, that stays on screen as you scroll the results pane.
Check out at the end when he demos Music-dot-app's Settings pane changing to include CD-ripping settings when and only when a CD drive is available, something they could also do and chose not to for Apple Music subscription service when the user isn't subscribed.
My last (and first, and only) iPhone was even worse. At one point the Settings app had no fewer than three paid-service nags at the top that I had to scroll through to even get to the first actual setting.
Storage almost full: enable iCloud Backup!
Try Apple Music, first month free!!
Activate your Apple News+ free trial!!! https://i.ibb.co/Cp275qQ9/news.webp
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!
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.
At least I've never had to use the store in my 15+ years of using MacBooks, and I can't see myself using one anytime soon, unless Apple starts forcing you to (in which case I'll just stick to using homebrew).
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.