But maybe it's also because I left computer support type roles and I haven't seen the nightmares like I did with XP/2000/Vista/7. But as an end user/casual security and IT watcher I can't complain too much (yet).
And as an anecdote the only problem I've had updating was the one large change to the audio stack they did (and needed to do-it's so much better). The huge issue that arose was I needed to unmute my headphones. Other than that I seriously have not noticed any update other than maybe seeing the % when I boot up in the morning. I keep track of when the big ones come so I can run O&O after those, but I really haven't even skipped a beat due to an update.
I will say that since Vista there has been a ton of improvement on the driver model, display system, network stack, audio stack (as you mentioned), and a few other relatively low-level pieces, but pretty much everything above that has been a continual shitshow of user-hostile bullshit and overly complex interlocking crapware.
Start Menu used to just be a menuized view of a folder structure, now it's some horrid amalgamation of junk that breaks whenever the Windows Apptore database gets corrupt, which is surprisingly often considering no one here even uses Windows Appstore apps.
Older Windows versions had their bugs, sure, but on the whole they cared a lot more about the user, about not breaking their shit and making sure their updates were actually worth applying. Microsoft has made it very clear since Windows 10 that they hate the user.
And if you read past the headline you find out that they had numerous other problems with their security practices that were actually responsible for them being compromised, because if "keep it up to date" is the extent of your security policy then you don't have a security policy. There are always exploitable issues in an OS, sometimes updates even introduce them (remember heartbleed? or that time Debian broke key gen?).
> From my experience as someone who has had 0 problems since beta
From your experience as someone with no experience dealing with issues caused by Windows Update, got it.
> Choose any other OS. Any OS at all that is sufficiently complicated as to compete with Windows (maybe as a starting point anything a tiny bit more complicated than ChromeOS). Then name a problem that's happened with Windows 10. I'll show something similar if not worse happening on the other OS you've chosen.
This doesn't mean that Windows 10 isn't bad, it just means that everything is bad.
> The problem, IMO, isn't the OS. It's the freedom the OS allows and the billions of different configurations you'll find out there.
The problem is the OS. If you have designed your OS in such a way as to make updating it a pain in the ass that's prone to breaking things, and turning updates off also a pain in the ass, then the problem is the OS.