Yes, but at the same time I ran Windows XP and Windows 7 without any updates for about 15 years combined and I can count the number of times I had to format due to malware or a virus on less than 1 hand.
I once had 280 days of uptime on Windows 7 while constantly running VMs, an entire dev environment, games, etc.. It was a really good OS for what it was.
I guess the moral of the story here is if you want to play with sharp knives you should have the option to. Power users who have been using computers for most of their lives shouldn't be put on the same playing field as your 65 year old Aunt or Uncle who still thinks AOL is the internet.
When I go to my relatives for which i have installed a version of Linux, even though they don't update it very often it is never infected with anything. No malware, no virus, nothing. Always working exactly as I left it. That's one less headache when I deal with family members.
If enough people do this for their family members, when the Linux malware comes, it will sweep like a wildfire on dry wood. A complacent attitude, being trained not to worry about updates or malware is likely setting people for a very unpleasant surprise down the road.
Just use one of the third party utilities.
> it forces updates on you.
Prior to this, Microsoft received over a decade of scorn for not forcing updates for 0-days and other RCEs. RCEs in the wild on Windows make the news. RCEs in the wild for months on end are bad for the entire world.
Does no one remember the complete nightmare that was going to a relative's house and realizing they hadn't updating Windows in 1 year? From bot nets to hidden folders full of pirated files (or worse...), and an overall general expectation that all banking credentials ever entered on that machine are compromised.
Yes mandatory reboots are irritating, yes it would be nice if Microsoft hired back the armies of QA people they got rid of years ago so that the updates were more reliable, but those updates serve a real purpose.