It's worse than that. They're busy turning off their users with dark patterns, terrible UX, ads and spam in the OS, and endless amounts of unnecessary telemetry.
I just had to hack/patch windows 11 in order to bring back "never combine taskbar windows" functionality which existed in windows 10. I am strongly considering switching over at this point. Removal of "never combine" is such a productivity kill that it baffles me how this thing rolled out at all. Who took over the wheel over at Microsoft and who left, that made this major breaking change take place?
Oof - I understand your gripe completely, Win 11 is downright perplexing with some of this stuff, but if you're someone who wants the "Never combine..." option, you'll probably hate MacOS dock, the way window and app switching works, lack of any options there, and general "We know better than our users" mentality all over the place...
And yet, I and many of my friends will keep using Windows because the third-party Windows screen readers are better than macOS's VoiceOver in many ways. I have no doubt that other users have their own favorite (edit: or essential) third-party tools that keep them on Windows.
They had some promising years but I always sensed a struggle in the wheelhouse.
Now they are back to forcing Edge on people, ads on login screen and in the Start menu are their new inventions and their store is almost as broken as ever and most importantly hard earned trust flew out the window in the process.
Apple forces safari on users in iOS, has icloud ads and integrations built into the OS, and sells devices with locked down bootloaders/filesystems that don't let you sideload your own programs.
Who is the bigger threat here? The real threat to user freedom is the tribalism of picking the "lesser evil" when there are workable non-evil solutions like linux.
It doesn't force Safari. Chrome is absolutely allowed to create a browser and track users and monetize them on iOS. They just have to use the same rendering engine.
I'm not Apples greatest fan (see my latest comment), but there is a major difference between iCloud or OneDrive being pre-installed, both which is OK with me, and Candy Crush showing up in the start menu on my work laptop or some stupid game altering my login screen, again on my work laptop.
And yes, I too am a Linux user.
Why choose between various dumb and evil options if nice is available? (I know, some people get as mad at font problems and alignment on Linux as I get on microlagging on Windows and boneheaded CMD-TAB on Mac, but each to their own.)
No, you can't. There are no dark patterns, ads, or spam in macOS. The worst you could say is that it has "terrible UX." I would then respond: compared to what?
In my view, the only desktop-grade OS I prefer over the modern Mac is MacOS 9. It was much easier to use and understand from top to bottom. On the other hand, it lacked a lot of features I've come to take for granted (pre-emptive multitasking, multithreading, protected memory, support for modern hardware, gestures, etc).
There are plenty of dark patterns in macOS. For example, macOS will trick users into thinking that the apps they want to use are either broken or malicious if developers didn't pay Apple $100 a year and Notarize apps. macOS has increasingly become a platform to sell iCloud subscriptions, as well.
"iOS sends the MAC addresses of nearby devices, e.g. other handsets and
the home gateway, to Apple together with their GPS location.
Users have no opt out from this and currently there are few, if
any, realistic options for preventing this data sharing."
Power corrupts and when one company wields too much of it, shit will hit the fan.
I just gave you as a matter of fact statement where Apple sends private information to their servers, and your response is going to be that "Apple is better." Wow, you are an Apple sycophant. As George Carlin said: "Imagine a person of average intelligence, and then know that there are even dumber people than that." Why would someone be so compelled to defend a corporation, even when it's clearly doing so many things wrong. Slave Labor.. Check, Monopolistic Practices .. Check, Shady Deals ... Check.
Not to mention, up until a few years ago, most PCs did not come with TPMs, so they can't run Windows 11. And Windows 10 won't get security patches after 2025.
I built my computer in 2017, and it's still very capable of running modern games, and in three years it will still be perfectly fine. But I won't be able to run Windows 11 unless I do weird hacks and workarounds, or try to source a TPM that works with my motherboard.
Yes, Apple would have a difficult job displacing MS, but it seems that MS is set on helping them. I mean, who doesn't want ads on their work computer? /s