It’s hard to believe how despite all the telemetry, Microsoft still manages to be so out of touch with their users’ actual needs. It’s almost like there’s a hidden agenda somewhere.
The fundamental problem is that there is no singular, unified Microsoft; there is instead a loose confederation of warring tribes that happen to share a headquarters and a ticker symbol. And Windows is the battlefield on which these tribes hash out their disputes. Tribe A thinks Windows should appeal to people who use and love open source software. Tribe B thinks Windows’ ubiquity makes it a great platform to run ads…
About the camps and their goals, the open source one is to some extent present, obviously, but the ad one I don't really see because I run Pro. There is a third camp that unquestionably won, though:
The "UX/UI designer" camp. I assume all the garbage running in the background behind obscure registry toggles (because real configurability is bad for UX) that's meant to make it easier for grandmas and end up making it worse for everyone else, like your computer isn't really fully yours (neither the resources of it or the freedom to decide to not run these daemons) comes from misguided UX designers who think they know better than you how a computer should be used and that they can earmark a fifth of your CPU at any time to do whatever they want.
The UI designers also won. Everything is a soulless black or white with one contrasting color. They managed to make this "There are two places you can modify settings with two disparate styles" because somehow that's better than one older looking but consistent place.