I don't think it's entirely absurd that people will be more forgiving to a product that they actually like. Apple certainly has some stupid aspects to their cloud/account system, but for the most part, when I'm using my iPhone or Mac I don't feel like I'm being tracked with every single thing I do. They're not overhauling their settings menu every few years, they don't have 5 types of right-click menus that can pop up depending on where you are in the OS, they don't keep secretly installing Candy Crush on my machine and putting it front and center in the OS's top-level search menu. I could go on.
Windows has been worsening and worsening on the privacy and UX fronts, and all for an OS that nobody actually likes to use, but we continue to for some platform-locked games or killer app. We're hostages of Microsoft and they continue to use their position to abuse its "customers"
Essentially. They're in no way forcing you to give away credit card info.
Even the title is editorialized in a way to incite hatred against something that's already present in a competing OS. Isn't there an HN policy against such titles?
There are so many (and so simple) workarounds that it almost feels intentional. My favourite one is typing "a@a.com" as email, literally anything as password, and this will throw an error and viola, prompt you to create a local account. Been using this in the latest Windows 11 Dev builds, no MSA required. Even Microsoft Store works without MSA!
It has a very extensive Lua API.