This article on Windows Central make a valid point: that Microsoft has lost the trust of its users. I am only surprised that it has taken so long for this to happen. I lost trust in Microsoft many years ago.

The article lists several things that have contributed to this loss of trust:

• Requiring a Microsoft Account to setup Windows 11,
• Advertising in system-level interfaces like Start, Widgets, Settings, and File Explorer,
• Refusing to acknowledge user app defaults like browsers,
• Shoehorning MSN into Windows,
• Replacing native Windows apps with slower, uglier web apps,
• Full-screen prompts pushing you to setup OneDrive or Microsoft 365.

I would add to that list with:

• General poor system security (Windows is the most malware-prone of all the operating systems, and Microsoft is the slowest to patch security vulnerabilities),
• Updates that damage or disable users' systems,
• Updates and upgrades that are not optional,
• The inability, for normal (non-corporate) users, to defer some updates to a more convenient time,
• The inability to open apps remotely (you can open a remote desktop using RDP, but if you want just one app, you cannot - Citrix, used widely by corporate customers, allows this, as does Linux).

I am sure that many readers can add more to the list, from their own experience.

With the knowledge that MS does not want us to use Windows (discussed in the post directly below), the failures, annoyances and attitude that has led to loss of user trust looks more like a deliberate strategy than failure. In the operating system market, Microsoft makes most of its revenue from corporate customers, and almost nothing from private customer (most of whom get Windows already installed when they buy a PC, and which is licenced to the PC manufacturers at huge discounts).

I have only one system with Windows: a virtual machine with MS Office installed. I am seriously considering doing what Microsoft seems to want me to do: to change to the online Office 360 service, to manage my calendar directly in Google mail, and to retire my Windows VM.