I believe you, but the OS told me to upgrade to El Capitan using the App Store and the App Store told me I had to log in to iCloud and iCloud told me I had to g

I believe you, but the OS told me to upgrade to El Capitan using the App Store and the App Store told me I had to log in to iCloud and iCloud told me I had to give it a credit card. I believe you that there is a way around it, but there is also a way around getting upgraded to Windows 10. If the OS doesn't tell the average user about it, it's not part of the UX.