Fundamentally, I think you are driving at a legitimate complaint and it should be a concern with Apple products.

The direct answer, though, is largely one of execution. Microsoft isn't just pushing this heavily. They are doing so poorly.

Apple does not tie the local account to the cloud account the same way. On a Mac you create a local account and you can (and almost certainly will) create a cloud account to link to it. But they are separate accounts. In fact I’m pretty sure Apple blocks you from setting the passwords the same on both, presumably with the intent of reminding you that they are not the same entity.

I don't recall macos forcing it. They definitely over-suggest it and the ecosystem (especially for dev) is very full of it and I consider that a problem, but it's limited in scope. If you don't want the Apple ecosystem, as far as I know you never need an AppleID.

you can totally use macOS without an Apple account

Apple is a hardware company -- their software exists to support their hardware.

Microsoft is a cloud provider now -- their software exists to support their cloud business.

The key difference is that you do not need an Apple account to use a Mac.

Most people DO use one, though, because that's how you access the iCloud services that underpin the Apple ecosystem. But it's not MANDATORY.

My understanding is that you cannot even log into a Windows machine without an MSFT account. That's a big difference.

How do you mean?