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Comment by rufus_foreman | Hacker News Reader

Can I get one without providing a credit card number or creating an account with Apple?

You would be flushing most of the value proposition of macOS down the drain. You wouldn’t get any cross-platform features (iMessage, iCloud, photos, FaceTime, calendar etc etc) and you wouldn’t have access to the App Store. The biggest reason I see to use a Mac is that it’s part of the Apple ‘ecosystem’. You might as well grab something you can run Linux on, you’ll save money and keep your privacy.

You can pay cash, and tell them you don't need help with the setup.

Is it not possible to visit one of their stores and pay with cash?

i'd expect people to not want to carry such a large amount of cash, and it makes the shop a burglary target.

Credit card payment is likely the only form accepted in a store imo (not been to one physically myself, so i can only guess).

Your guess is wrong, physical Apple stores have no problem with large amounts of cash. :-)

I don't know. If I did that, won't it ask for a credit card when I try to update the thing?

you don't need a credit card to update macosx. You might need an apple login for some updates, such as for your appstore apps, since that's not operating system related.

You can also create an apple ID, and get no-cost software from their app store (and update preinstalled ones) without a payment method, according to this article which is pretty recent. I did this myself many years ago and it worked.

https://www.macworld.com/article/334285/how-to-set-up-an-app...

Thanks, will have to try that out.

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