I agree with most of what you say about Windows, technically, it's an excellent and reliable operating system honed over three decades.
Like you, I make the above comment based on my long experience from the IBM 360 through to Assembler, CP/M, OS/2, VAX, Linux and many others including Win 95, NT, W2K through to the present.
What you fail to acknowledge is that Microsoft has changed the Windows paradigm to such an extent that many users (but far from all)
can no longer accept the horribly onerous terms and conditions imposed by Microsoft for the use of its operating system.
This is now a political issue. With Windows, Microsoft has by far a monopoly on desktop operating systems which amounts to many millions of users. Its monopoly means that any effective competition by way of a truly API-compatible software product simply cannot emerge (eg: ReactOS has been lingering in the wilderness for over a quarter century). In effect, with enforced lock-in, Microsoft has now hijacked—kidnapped—the user environment and experience then exploited the spoils for its own financial benefit.
A good analogy would be an ongoing patent on the position and layout order of the brake and accelerator pedals in vehicles with royalties payable to use them. Other manufacturers cannot innovate as different systems would cause confusion and thus be unsafe. In case you're wondering that's a definition of a monopoly.
Microsoft is not only forcing users to work in ways they do not want to work but also it's now milking and robbing millions of them of their privacy for its own financial advantage. Users no longer have an option to remain as they were and are coerced to upgrade from older less restrictive versions of Windows because Microsoft deliberately invokes planned obsolescence by not updating drivers nor supporting newer hardware in those earlier versions. Simply, Microsoft forces users to move to a more controlled and restrictive environments.
Ethically and environmentally that is unacceptable, and in any political system that isn't compromised by lobbying and kickbacks such bad behavior would be penalized.
Microsoft knows full well all that and that for users to escape its clutches they have to jump over barriers and hurdles that are practically impossible to navigate, they thus destined to remain captured in their unwanted dystopian environment. That's the narrative—it's Big Tech's plan, and grudgingly I have to admit it's brilliantly effective.
To undo this enforced lock-in and for everyone to escape Microsoft's clutches it would take billions of manhours of effort—time that would be much more productive spent elsewhere. Clearly, that's not going to happen. Right, coercion and exploitation pays off big-time; again, 'kidnapping' sums up Microsoft's actions to a tee.
Given the out-of-control behavior and damage done by Microsoft and other Big Tech players a point of inflection has been reached, it's now a political matter and the perpetrators will find the momentum very difficult to reverse completely. Cory Doctorow's 'enshitification' captures the zeitgeist along what needs to be done to bring Big Tech to heel.
It may take decades but at least it's a beginning.
Not only do the Big Tech monopolies have to be broken up but those responsible for conceiving and implementing the abuse in the first instance must be bought to account, hopefully by landing them in the slammer. What's happened isn't competitive capitalism as work but sheer exploitation and Big Tech's at the center of it.
If you think I'm bitter about this then you'd be correct, I am. Whenever I think of the many thousands of hours I've spent bypassing unwarranted and unreasonable restrictions brought on by coroprate greed and fixing crappy enshitified software my blood boils. That time should have been spent on more productive endeavors such as providing users with better programs and systems. Seems you've led a charmed working life not experienced by most of us.
Given your stated experience I should not have to refresh your memory of early Microsoft Windows EULAs (NT, W2K etc.) which incorporated terms to the effect "no user information will be sent to Microsoft". Now compare that with the Windows 11 EULA/terms and conditions, forced online user accounts etc. What has now happened with Windows 11 is the antithesis—a complete reversal—of the earlier paradigm. Here, one's once independence has been traded for lock-in and expensive rent models with exit conditions that are almost impossible to exercise in any practical way.
Seems you're quite content with this.
What's relevant here is that if your experience is as you've stated then you will be well aware of these glaring issues, so that raises the question of your dismissive attitude to the problems. Thus it's reasonable to assume it's highly likely you're more than just part of the Windows Insider program, probably an employee or such. Perhaps even AI generated content.
I apologize if I'm wrong.
That's your prerogative and no one questions your right. Presumably it pays well, but I'd foreshadow that as time marches on you'll find yourself more and more on the outer.
Good luck to you, you might need it.