I'd argue, cautiously, that general computation is already an exception. That's why I prefer Linux to Windows. On Linux I can issue a command from a general command interface (the CLI) to just play a video. If I only want audio, it's an option away. I can script things together. Most of my tools are interoperable. That's because I use FOSS, free protocols, free formats, free tech in general. Everything works together and everything augments each other. Windows, the popular workstation, is no that. It's a system of systems, where everything is a monolithic closed box that you can't get inside. It's inside your computer, you use it, but it's not yours. It's on loan from someone else. Interoperability is virtually non-existent, and there isn't such a thing as a usable CLI (an environment that would connect everything together). That's not general computing, I argue. General computing involves ther power to generalize, use the computing technology in arbitrary ways. Closed software, customer lock-in and all that other corporate bs is the anti-thesis of that.

Longer rant than expected. I find it a frustrating issue. Mostly because I intimately feel like we're paying a very high price for the greed of the few.

I use the same video player on Windows that you use on Linux, mpv. And I have a ton of scripts I use to navigate my video library. Windows doesn't put any burden on apps to not be interoperable. Plenty of apps interoperate just fine.

It's a fair point that Windows doesn't put burden on applications to be less interoperable, but it doesn't facilitate it either. The UNIX philosophy has completely bypassed Windows. You can do things on its command-line, especially if you augment it in various ways, but do you ever feel like it's a first-class citizen on Windows, or its ecosystem? I'd argue there's reasons for why, as a rule of thumb, only the biggest FOSS projects are compatible with Windows.

One such example is Intel ME. In the future, if the compute paradigm shifts towards something cloud-like, we might all be "stuck" inside an isolated Intel SGX container (or vice versa).

[1] https://itsfoss.com/fact-intel-minix-case/