For a tech forum, I'm surprised at these responses. I have to Google shit all the time, including "can I do X in Y". I guess I'm the one out of touch, sorry.
I don't think anyone here is saying that they personally would have had difficulty installing Windows without a Microsoft account. I've done so myself.
What we're doing is empathizing with people who don't typically post on tech forums—people like my dad who install Windows on their own but don't regularly dig deep into the system internals. When I went through the process of installing Windows without setting up a Microsoft account I was appalled by how hard Microsoft is working to make sure that most people don't figure it out, and that was back in the days when all you had to do was not connect to Wi-Fi.
It's great that you'd be able to figure it out, but that's in spite of Microsoft's best efforts to hide the path.
I'm generally either at work or just done work when I'm on HN so I'm in "work mode". The next time I'm called on for family tech support on a Sunday, I'll think back to this thread and be in a better position to empathize with a non-techie view.
I've been a Linux user for decades through some dark days and some "hard" distros, and I would call that "very difficult". Part of the difficulty is knowing what you don't know, and that absolutely qualifies.