I really love your comment since you’re championing macOS instead of Windows due to the advertising present in the Windows ecosystem. At the same time, Apple is heavily expanding their advertising presence across their platforms. I’m certain that Apple’s advertising will be less obvious, but it’s still going to be there nonetheless.

We’ll see with apple. Hopefully they won’t be as obnoxious as Microsoft. Windows is getting so bloated with adverts, teams integrations. Most of the OEMs hardware is junk with a load of spyware installed for good measure. Linux may be the last bastion of the free world.

If you don't wish to use iCloud, but do use the App Store, you may find this work around helpful.

https://osxdaily.com/2021/10/30/dont-use-icloud-how-to-remov...

It's not a lifetime commitment

Joke's on Apple, I'm still on El Capitan.

Linux Distros are the only way to get an OS without advertising built in.

Tell that to Canonical: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1434512/how-to-get-rid-of-ub...

The fact that this plus that one time years ago when they added Amazon search to the main menu (uninstallable with one command) are the worst things that thousands of angry FOSS extremists have found, shows you what a great and ad-free OS Ubuntu really is.

The cool thing is not only was there a lot of push-back on this sort of behavior, which is great, make sure you let companies know you don't like being turned into the product. but linux itself is pretty great at avoiding lock-in when a company does this. not only are there 50, "almost but not quite the same" distributions you can trivialy switch to, there is probably a distribution whos mission statement is "X" but without the ads.

I understand your decision. But still switching from one proprietary OS to another does not help in long run. There's no guarantee that Apple will not become another adtech company. Linux seems to be the long term fix for all of us.

Doesn't Apple do similar things, trying to get people to use iCloud?