Reality check, the OS used by 80% of the world for desktop workloads uses COM as the main userspace API since 2007.

Classical Win32 C APIs are for all practical purposes frozen since Windows XP.

And the answer you practical won't like, when not using COM directly, the advised way from Microsoft is to make use of .NET bindings for the OS APIs, either via C++/CLI, or the new kid in town, C++/WinRT as Windows Runtime Component.

Even if you don't use Windows as desktop, the other desktop contenders, also use COM like APIs on their driver stack, IO Kit, DriverKit, Treble, and XPC/Binder aren't much different from DCE RPC development experience.