Microsoft’s war on user choice

It looks like Microsoft, in their arrogance, has decided to arbitrarily block people who use certain third-party taskbar enhancements from being able to get Windows Updates (https://www.xda-developers.com/startallback-no-windows-update-microsoft/). Never mind that StartAllBack currently works with the latest canary release and that there are no current incompatibilities; Microsoft in Apple-like paternalistic fashion has dictated that they, and they alone, get to decide what you can and cannot run on the computer that you paid for.

If the Windows 11 taskbar had a modicum of basic functionality, people wouldn’t need to use products like ExplorerPatcher and StartAllBack in the first place but Microsoft seems more interested in bogging down Windows 11 with ads and other useless nonsense then in actually producing a functional operating system. It’s telling that the one guy who writes StartAllBack has been able to produce something far more functional than Microsoft; even going so far as to implement a proper dark mode (something Microsoft has not been able to figure out for almost ten years at this point).

This is of course, shortly after implementing a rootkit into Windows of which the sole purpose is to frustrate the process of changing the default browser from Edge. Even Apple doesn’t force the user to use Safari on Mac OS. How much developer time was wasted implementing this rootkit that could have been better spent actually improving the operating system? The way that this rootkit was implemented (and I will call it a rootkit because it is kernel level code that I consider to have a fundamentally malicious purpose) is completely hackish (most likely because the kernel team, which is run by actual adults, wouldn’t let the Windows Consumer Team screw up the kernel by implementing such functionality directly). This rootkit also provides another attack surface for security vulnerabilities.

How much developer time is being wasted on this nonsense? Imagine how much better Windows would be if Microsoft actually had developers spend their time improving the operating system.

Microsoft needs to stop with the Apple envy. I do not use a Mac specifically because I need my computer to work the way I want it to and not the way Apple (or Microsoft) wants it to. If I wanted a Mac, I would have gotten a Mac. Mac users aren’t going to switch to the “Great Value” version of Mac OS that Microsoft seems intent to turn Windows into. Is anyone at Microsoft even home anymore?