I don't have an Apple ID and I don't have a Microsoft ID. I won't have either, ever. I do have a Google ID and I can't wait for the day that I can finally retire it. All of these feel like the exact opposite of what the internet should have been, this centralization and abuse of critical mass is a serious problem.
> I don't have an Apple ID and I don't have a Microsoft ID. I won't have either, ever.
I don't know whether I have a Microsoft account or not.
I didn't want to have one, obviously. But at some point I wanted to use Visual Studio and setting that up required me to create a Microsoft account. I continued not to use that account as an account on my computer, because why on earth would I do that.
So, other than using Visual Studio, that account never did anything at all, sort of like you'd expect from an account that you forced someone to create under duress.
One day I opened Visual Studio and a popup message displayed, telling me that because of what appeared to be fraudulent behavior by my Microsoft account, it was being revoked or disabled or whatever. (But I was still free to continue using Visual Studio.)
OK.
They just can't help themselves. It's as if someone's career depends on the number of users in the system, no matter whether or not they actually provide value to the users by having them in the system. Everybody and their dog wants you to be part of their eco-system. The best way to get me to not use a service is to have an account requirement that does not provide any functionality that I could have had without that account. It is also why pianojacq.com does not have any accounts, there simply isn't anything that you could do with an account that you can not do without.
> Everybody and their dog wants you to be part of their eco-system.
And that's the core problem. We stopped making tech and started making walled-garden "ecosystems." Apple is the most egregious, but everyone else is doing it too.
What ever happened to open standards, cross-platform, interoperability?
I never wanted a world where I have to choose all Apple tech, or all Google tech, or All Microsoft, or whatever just to get devices and software that integrate and play nicely together. When I was younger I remember being relatively platform agnostic. I had windows and Linux PCs, they dual booted without Windows killing grub every update, I didn't need to have my kernel signed with Microsoft's key. I had a macbook, an Android phone, wired headphones. My music was local on a network share and I used it with local music players across all my computers.
None of those ever pestered me for an account, or tried to push me to buy more of their "ecosystem," or sell me a subscription to use basic features.
Now everything is a sales funnel. Every app or service wants your email, every device wants an account, everybody is always trying to upsell you on something. We stopped making great tech products a long time ago and are now just extracting rent.
I used to be optimistic about tech. I dreamed of a world of openness and interoperability, not lock-in and ecosystems.
The only problem here is apple. Just don't buy apple products and you're fine. You can have. A windows or Linux pc and use Google sheets or whatever. I don't know whether the office suite is available on Linux but you have options for creating files that are office compatible.
The only problem here is apple, I don't think it seems fair to include MS and Google, they're much less walled than apple is. Maybe they could do better too, but apple is much worse.
Fair enough, Windows still plenty open (outside of the MS account requirement for home edition), but I think we can safely include Google now with the sideloading changes on Android, they clearly have seen Apple's rent revenue and want a slice of the pie.
I refuse to update to windows 11 because it requires setting up a Microsoft account. So all new computers (and some of the old ones) in our family have had their disks wiped and Ubuntu installed instead. We started doing this even before the Cortana/AI bs.
Google a/c was the easiest to retire for me. Stopped using Android [0], Gmail - done!
Apple ID, on the other hand - if you use an Apple device then a whole lot of (safety) features are literally tied to an Apple a/c and don't even exist without it. I can't remember I ever had a MSFT ID.
I dream of a day when device makers are forced to expose APIs where one can add a device account provider a/c or device id provider a/c which offers various features like theft protection, remote lock et cetera or a self hosted solution. Yeah, that's just a dream.
[0] I do use one for work/testing and there's a throwaway Google a/c added on that created using a disposable email from SimpleLogin.