I’ve never heard these criticisms about Windows before.
My challenge to the author would be to address the much more serious criticisms of Windows that have been frustrating real users and have been left unresolved.
Address the forced Microsoft login in Windows 11. Even walled garden Apple doesn’t force that in their desktop OS.
Address the pre-installed junkware games that plagued Windows 10.
Address the Bing and Edge nags and hostility toward the will of the user.
Address sending my start menu search query to bing by default, and how Windows search is horrendous compared to every other OS. How is a free program made by a single person able to perform faster and with more accurate results? (Everything)
Address the fact that Microsoft still tolerates OEMs dumping spyware/junkware/scareware like McAfee on their computers when you buy them new.
Address the nags to put my data on OneDrive.
Address the dual hidden right click context menus in File Explorer that annoy power users to this day.
Address the fact that File Explorer will hang for multiple seconds with completely unresponsive UI upon bootup if you pin a network share that is no longer accessible.
Address the reason why the taskbar lost its decades-old customization options with Windows 11.
Address the disaster that was the Windows 8 UI, which was even more of a disaster in the context of Windows Server where tablet UI made even less sense.
Address the reason why telemetry fingerprints your connected devices and installed programs and sends that private information to Microsoft by default.
Address the reason why a $200 OS charges an extra dollar for HEVC video extensions support to gain compatibility with the most popular phone in the world like it’s a sleazy used car dealership.
Address the fact that a $200 retail price operating system made by one of the largest and most resourced companies in the world is somehow slower, less user-friendly, has less stable drivers, and is an overall worse experience than a grocery store ice cream aisle stocked full of free operating systems cobbled together by volunteers. This has gotten so bad that mainstream technology influencers and very non-technicial surface-level mainstream audience phone and car reviewers like Marques Brownlee start recommending Linux.
In what universe does it make any logical sense that I abandoned the operating system made by the creator of DirectX, Xbox, and the owner of potentially the largest collection of game studios in the world because a game developed and published by that very same company (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle) continually crashed with my mainstream commercial graphics card on that company’s OS? By switching to a different OS that’s not even supposed to be compatible with this game, my graphics driver instability stopped entirely. (AMD RX 9070XT, a top-of-the-line most recent generation GPU).
It seems like the purpose of this article is to humanize this OS that comes from a monopolistic and generally horrible, unethical company; to say “everyone will criticize Windows over anything minor, when it’s actually a great artisan OS made by real people. Look, we put a picture of a baby on the sticker! How cute.”
While I agree that Microsoft employees are real people who aren’t necessarily responsible for the draconian choices of their C-suite lords, and that making any functioning modern OS is no small feat, let’s not pretend that Windows wouldn’t be a better much OS if it was produced by someone else — almost anyone else.
