Just because something that you want fixed isn't done does not mean they're "slow". If it hasn't been included after years of being "requested by masses", then it's more likely it just won't be included period.

Just because you are a hobbist user and never met a productivity problem it doesn't mean that the professional population does not suffer from it (see, I can make unfunded assumptions too about the other end ;) ). All around me have this problem, with various level of seriousity. Google the problem, like I did for prolonged time searching for a good answer, it will bring up masses of troubled people.

> maybe Microsoft already calculated that fixing it won't bring much if any more money than not and therefore that it's not worth it

Can you also have an educated deliberation about the calculations justified the removal of this feature existed before? ;)

Does that somehow change prioritization? If anything, it would lower the priority because there's a workaround people can use.

> All around me have this problem, with various level of seriousity. Google the problem, like I did for prolonged time searching for a good answer, it will bring up masses of troubled people.

If it was as large of a problem as you claim, with as wide an impacted userbase, it would have already been fixed. Yet here we are.

All you've proven is that there is a vocal minority. Which I already said.

At the scale of Microsoft and Windows (1.4 billion active users), for every person complaining about a specific problem, there are literally millions of users who aren't. Just because it is a problem for you does not mean it's automatically a big enough problem to address. If it isn't going to actively lose users (which it clearly isn't, considering people wrote apps to stay on Windows and have this behavior), then it isn't worth it.

> Can you also have an educated deliberation about the calculations justified the removal of this feature existed before? ;)

I'm not a seer, but it's plainly obvious from a software prioritization standpoint. The taskbar was rewritten and the feature was not justified as being important enough to keep. Wow, such deep, so insight.

> If anything, it would lower the priority because there's a workaround people can use.

Until this happens:

Windows 11 update breaks PCs that dare sport a custom UI https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/01/microsoft_windows_11_... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999885

Things break, the app developers fix it, and then they work again. I don't think there's an expectation anywhere that third party apps will work forever, from the standpoint of anyone involved.

But a viable workaround for users even if it isn't first party will change prioritization when looking at a feature.

There is even a paid app for that (beyond free ones)! : D

It might be "masses" to a single outside observer, but a drop in the bucket to someone that has a picture of how big that mass truly is compared to the rest of the userbase.

When you make a change like this where there is no configurable option to go back to the old style of working you cause issues for tens of millions of people who developed a workflow that depended on that.

There have been dozens of little things like this. Some got fixed in Win11 eventually (so they were obviously bugs). My example: in Windows Explorer you can start typing the name of a file and as long as you keep a quick pace, you will end up with that file highlighted. When Win11 shipped, it stopped matching at the first letter.

This happens to a lot of projects, it's a shame it's infested MS.