I don't much care about Windows, but as someone who has to use it for certain work I feel like I have the right to complain about Microsoft trying to force it's other products on me. And they probably could survive by having their OS be a bit more end-user friendly,, and if they couldn't, we would use some other OS.
Linux is a server kernel primarily. It gets used elsewhere, but that’s the core focus for development. Windows is a consumer OS. They’re really two different tools for two different jobs.
What you didn’t mention before, but now you are, is that you would choose a different product that works as you described. That sounds better. The only problem is that it doesn’t exist. Again, no one is going to spend $1 billion to build a system for everyone else to essentially have native integrations into as they sit back having spent all of that money to build this hypothetical extremely flexible product. Those types of ideas are basically the typical HN pipe dream.
Obviously, I want the best experience as an end-user. But I think it’s ridiculous, at a certain point you should have to invest the billions of dollars to build your own equivalent operating system. You really can’t expect all of that. Microsoft already has a pretty flexible system.
Maybe there is a business model for that massive investment. I don’t think that 100% native integration for third party applications is a big draw to most people. It’s mostly something people complain about on this forum.
Proof of that is Apple. It’s relatively inflexible, and people seem to like it quite a bit. They are doing very well. Then there’s also Linux but then people complain things aren’t tightly integrated enough.
Basically people want to have their cake and eat it too on someone else’s 1 billion dollar investment.