Yes, Microsoft seems to be better at UI for sure but spyware its just replaced with Microsoft's i guess.

I have app history disabled in Windows 10 but they don't care they send that information to servers anyway

Ah stop it.

MS not even close to the decadent stuff that G is doing, insensitive, business models, product users are also completely different.

But MS clearly wants to be funded by advertising: obviously signalled by not charging for Windows 10 upgrades, and the "telemetry" and tendency towards an intrusive advertising model (e.g. "join Teams" popup on login in recent update).

I don't think Microsoft wants to be funded by advertising. They and Apple are trying to run the exact same playbook of not charging for OS upgrades, and instead focus on value added services on top (App Stores, Cloud Services, etc).

Apple telemetry and intrusive advertising for their services is so similar on iOS on volume/scale/purpose to everything people are complaining about on Windows 10, but I guess Apple gets a free pass because they are the "scrappy underdog" that also had a larger market cap for a few recent years?

To be fair, Apple doesn't have as much of a reason to misuse your data as Microsoft, and their main way to benefit off you is by selling you more devices. Microsoft failed in the mobile department, so they mostly have desktops, laptops, and high end tablets, but their money comes largely from software running on those devices, and a lot of those services use personal data.

So, Apple wants to make sure you have a good experience on their devices so you'll buy more, Microsoft wants to know which of their products will fit your usage.

To me, Microsoft's telemetry is more creepy than Apple's, but both pale in comparison to Google's tracking. I choose to avoid all three companies' products as much as possible because I don't like being tracked.

Microsoft advertises their own products and wants you to pay for products in their ecosystem. They will shove the same stuff down your throat (Azure, Onedrive, etc) pretty much whatever you do, which means they don't have a vested interest in behavioral advertising.

Google on the other hand shows ads across the internet, so they have to track you a lot more intimately in order to make you buy a new toaster or whatever (I haven't seen online ads in years, so I don't really know what they're like).

Agreed. "Aggressive" telemetry is still annoying, but google is on a whole other level.

Can't you install the OS version of Chrome for that? (Chromium)

Can Chromium play any DRM-ed content?

Widevine and proprietary codec support (you'll want h.264) are optional components of Chromium, it depends on the build settings. But yes, you can. You can even go as far as enabling Google sync if you so choose but I don't see why you wouldn't just use Chrome at that point unless you had other customizations and did your own builds.

The one thing I'd like to see out of the thousand Chromium clones is one which modularizes the install more. I don't care about flash, bluetooth/usb, all of the SSDP stuff, PNACL, the PDF viewer, the hidden Google extensions, and others I can't think of right now but they are an absolute pain to remove and even harder to keep removed while staying up to date.