No, you can set up a Mac with a local account without any weird hacks during setup.
No. There's a prompt to use iCloud but it's not a requirement. I don't need/want iCloud so I've never logged in on mine.
> Doesn't Apple require you to have an online account to log into a Mac to use it?
There's some iCloud integration, but I don't think your login is an iCloud account, it's just a local account.
You can use an Apple ID but it’s optional and it’s not tied to the user account unlike windows. A Mac OS user is basically like creating a user account on a Linux machine!