Offlive account during install works only when you are not connected to the internet from that PC. Maybe also only with Win Pro, not Home.
The crap you have to disable are all dark patterns and I hope the EU rips them a few more holes.
“Just update”… I think I went into enough details about what pissed me off in my initial comment.
Almost every Linux distro would have been: boot the installer, select disk, select meta packages, username, password, done. 10 mins later you have an up to date system with no shady online crap.
Although to be fair, WSL fixes that issue to a big degree. Maybe even better than OSX, since you get a real Linux with real userspace. WSL(2) might be the only really cool feature Microsoft added to Windows, that actually brings value for the user.