In System Preferences -> App Store
I can uncheck the box that says "Automatically check for updates". It's trivial to override these perceived "flaws" in OS X.
Try doing that with Windows. The best you can do is peruse some lists that people maintain in places like Github. Maybe those work, maybe they don't. Consequently I've avoided Windows for well over 10 years now (except for XP in a VM, which I use for playing Freecell).
> Microsoft abused the update system to download an entire, multi-GB OS (Windows 10) on systems running on Windows 8, "just in case they will want to upgrade".
Just pointing out that Microsoft is not alone with the above practices? It's not a question of whether you can disable it or not, it's that ALL companies do this. I don't necessarily like this but I empathize, general consumers don't know what's good for them, and Microsoft's reputation for security is on the line here.
We run Windows 10 and the lastest Windows server on all our machines and don't have problems because we have good, in-house, local IT people and also good security on the edge routers.