Microsoft is perhaps the worst offender in this regard. Every update to Windows makes it worse in one way or another, and it's become quite exhausting.
I would have cut Microsoft a lot of slack if the purpose of Windows 11 was to cut down on the sheer amount of cruft and legacy jank that Windows has acquired over the years.
Alas, Windows 11 is merely rounded corners, a worse file explorer, telemetry galore, and a mandatory Microsoft account meant to hock OneDrive and Copilot on unsuspecting laypersons everywhere.
Even simple applications like calculator and photo viewer now launch with a noticeable delay, no doubt because they have to try and communicate with some Microsoft service somewhere in the cloud before letting someone use an application locally.
Correct, for now. It is getting increasingly difficult to bypass and it’s not unreasonable to think that the command line and registry tweaks that are still available today will get disabled in the near future. Microsoft has already disabled a few bypasses.
Command line and registry tweaks? I didn't bother with any of those and got an unlinked account set up the minute I first booted up Windows, as did all the non-technical folks in my family. Sure, the option is obscured very much during the first launch process, but it's still very much doable by someone without any technical chops.
I bought a gaming PC last year after having not used windows for a long time. It's crazy how much slop has been added. Felt like i had to opt out of 10000 different things to just use my computer without internet/cloud accounts
Alas, Windows 11 is merely rounded corners, a worse file explorer, telemetry galore, and a mandatory Microsoft account meant to hock OneDrive and Copilot on unsuspecting laypersons everywhere.
Even simple applications like calculator and photo viewer now launch with a noticeable delay, no doubt because they have to try and communicate with some Microsoft service somewhere in the cloud before letting someone use an application locally.