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You don’t need the App Store to install most apps, and can just download .dmg or even .zip files with them; I feel like only a handful of developers go full-App Store-only (with good reason; it not only imposes extra restrictions on certain functionality but also takes a big cut of your sale).

I've used macbooks for 15 years and have never felt the need to create an Apple ID. Maybe I've just been lucky but I have never even encountered a piece of software that didn't offer a direct download or brew installation.

And even if, there are torrents and sites. Same for Steam games. Fuck the cloud.

Xcode.

Development on Apple hardware generally

You only need Apple ID to get Xcode though, everything else is available without

Perhaps that's not a loss, because why would you want to depend on apps that you essentially need an Apple account to use? I've had great luck with finding apps with Homebrew.

Well I just stopped using a Mac. It's not worth jumping through hoops.