I'm no fan of the business practices of Google, Microsoft, Apple, or a number of the "big players" in the computer industry. But what I am is consistent about how I think about them and speak about them.
There have been heaven only knows how many posts here about the introduction of the Microsoft Account, which is something where Microsoft was playing catch-up, big time, with the rest of the industry. I can't recall a time (but perhaps there was one) where you could use Apple products without an Apple ID. I was a very early adopter of Gmail, in full knowledge (or as full as one could get) that it is not even close to truly private, and I use the Google ecosystem as well as Android. I must have a Google Account to do either of those two things. I see no reason why a Microsoft account is any different, and the fact that these now exist, and that many of my clients were "forced" into creating one at some point has saved their bacon when they had catastrophic system drive failure and would have had no idea where the license keys were for Windows or any of the Microsoft software (whether Office or M365, or other things) that they had installed over time on their systems. If they were using a Microsoft Account, retrieval of all software is greatly simplified.
As to system health telemetry, I adamantly refuse to call that spying. It simply isn't, and any modern OS worth its salt is using it to prevent the kinds of disasters around release times that used to be routine. They're not monitoring me, specifically.
Now there's plenty of spying/dossier building going on, and I'd say that web browsers supplied by Google (Chrome) and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Microsoft (Edge) are two of the biggest offenders in that regard. But one is not forced to use either of those products, and a very great many privacy-focused web browsers exist.
Unless someone is collecting data about me, specifically, and using it for things like targeted marketing, it's not spying. If it is being collected for this purpose, I've yet to see any OS that does this, because it would not only be a PR disaster but would eliminate its ability to be used in very broad swaths of potential markets, which is not something any of the makers want.
If Windows or MacOS or specific Linux distros can be used, for examples, in settings where HIPAA compliance is required, that pretty much tells you that they are not "spying" in any meaningful sense of that word. I'd be willing to bet that all of them are sending system health telemetry, and that telemetry knows what machine it's coming from, but since that's not about my own activities at the micro level, and directly tied to me, well . . .
I stand entirely behind my assertion that it is unprofessional for anyone in the IT industry to use the conspiracy-theory-esque term of spying for what modern operating systems do. If you want to use it about web browsers, be my guest, but not the OS. The sowing of FUD is best left to others, not us.
