I think Google and Android is worse in this way. The backup Android I had years ago forced me to login with my Gmail or I couldn’t use it. My old iPhone happily runs without being logged in. I just lose the cloud features. Whatever.
I have twenty years of iPhone data, eg messages, apps, etc. I can't easily move to some other phone.
A desktop, maybe, but I'd still have to repurchase or find alternates to a bunch of software. It is far, far better if the existing system _stays useful_.
I doubt anyone is arguing the opposite. The point of the parent is that the system staying useful and not turning hostile on your usecase is not under your control or something you can personally prevent, and until that magically changes it's best to structure your use case to be least affected by things not in your control.
I can use an iPhone without an Apple account. I cannot use an Android phone without a Google account unless they changed that in the last few years.
I haven't "signed in" to Android phone in 10 years.
Good luck doing that with iOS. I'm an iPhone user since the very first one and I think the control they have on app install/management is completely bonkers. The app store even sucks for keeping track of what your purchased/care about efficiently.
I just switched to iPhone and saw EU has forced apple to allow third party app stores. No such luck for those elsewhere.
When I get the phone and update the stock OS before wiping it, I don't need to sign into a Google account then, either, and I don't recall it being signed into someone else's, so I don't think regular Android requires it either, though my exposure is minimal so I can't guarantee it. It will try to have you sign in during the setup wizard, but I believe you can hit skip. You may need to skip connecting to the internet first to skip the account thing, I don't know. Maybe best done before you put the SIM in on top of that.
Throw it in the bin?