You wouldn’t know if a product had crashes like this unless you experienced it yourself, or if users sent you messages about it.

Even so, you’d have little way of knowing if the report you’re looking at is widespread or just a tiny anomaly. So you could easily dismiss a report that affected many people, or spent a tonne of time digging into a report that barely ever occurs.

Using telemetry data to enhance software is an incredibly useful and powerful tool. In direct response to your sarcasm: it is a superior method than how it “used to be”.