well if you think about it, its the same as google. To fully experience your android phone you need a gmail account.
There's a pretty large gap between "fully experience" and "use at all" though.
I had my phone for a few months before I got a gmail account, and I got it for reasons unrelated to the phone. Maybe my carrier and all of its software made this possible.
I got a hotmail account back when it was the equivalent to what gmail is today. Because I had no shortage of e-mail addresses, I used the hotmail account mainly to sign up at websites that I didn't completely trust, and didn't use it on a regular basis. When Microsoft took over, a lot of that convenience was lost because they'd close my account for inactivity, ask for more personal information than I wanted to give etc. etc.
When Technet and MSDN started demanding that I either join MSN (a pay-for service at the time) or open yet another-because-they-closed-my-last hotmail account as the sole conduit for accessing my business accounts with Microsoft, that didn't sit well with me at all. I didn't need more e-mail accounts to keep track of, and being the top corporate IT officer for a life-or-death business it was against my own corporate policy. But the business wasn't going to give up Windows over this, so I had no choice.
Since then, Microsoft has gotten more and more disagreeable about tying their professional services to their consumer products. I don't like it. It has been an influencing factor in me moving away from Microsoft products. Since leaving that job when it vanished during a corporate takeover, I've all but stopped supporting Windows. I've made exceptions, like with clients with existing Microsoft Select contracts that I don't have to administer. But aside from that I've been leaning towards educating existing clients about why buying Microsoft products for the workplace don't make fiscal sense (only when that's true, of course) and letting go of some lucrative clients that aren't lucrative enough for me to spend a lot of time keeping on top of all of Microsoft's products.
Now speaking as a consumer who has had nothing but trouble with Microsoft mail, Live and MSN (I can't get photos of loved ones because MSN demands that I sign up first) being unwanted intrusions, if I got a new Microsoft Surface and saw "Sign in/up with your Microsoft account", that thing would go right back into the box and be returned with a strong suggestion to the store manager that they should warn their customers about tricks like that.
I've noticed that Google has been acting a little big for its breeches lately. Nothing big, but definitely a move in the wrong direction for me. I like Android just fine, but I'm prepared to leave it behind and never look back if push comes to shove. I've done it before in business, and I'm sure I'll do it plenty more before they lower me into the ground.
