And them I'm greeted with an advert for Cortana as a notification. And when I installed it, at the start, the entire installer uses Cortana now and shouts at you at full volume. And at every step it wants me to sign in to a Microsoft account over and over again or half the OS decides it's not going to work. What the fuck?
It's a mess. A total undeniable crapfest which just needs to walk itself off a cliff.
I'm a recent switcher to macOS after dabbling for a decade on a second machine. There just isn't this shit to deal with on the platform. It mostly just works and is incredibly boring. Which is what I want from a tool. Yes I sign in with an Apple Account but in the decade I've had one, I have had zero problems. MS account ownership is hell from billing problems, xbox live sign in problems, data loss, crazy authentication fragmentation, the lot.
(even though I've been writing C# for 15 years now)
I should get that going I guess. I just can't decide what to learn and it's difficult to find time (nodejs? Go? Python?).
You didn't buy the operating system. You bought a license to use it. That is not a difference without distinction. Microsoft very much view it as their operating system, even though you've purchased a license to use it.
My solution is to use Linux, which has a more permissive license. I'm not sure if that will work for you, but it's nice not actually being dependent on a single vendor.
By the way, I'm not saying that it is right - just that it is what it is. You didn't buy an OS, you bought a license to use an OS. The distinction is important.
I'm not sure the answer is in one license over another, nor in one OS over another. I'm not sure it is, realistically, solved by any one company being 'good' or 'evil.'
I think the most realistic hope for the future is open standards being used and people opting to support them. If we get rid of proprietary standards, we can more easily have alternative software to do the same work.
As far as Microsoft goes, I do not really expect them to be good or evil. I expect them to do things that increase their profitability. I recognize that their goals don't always align with my best interests, so I generally avoid them.
At the same time, I'm grateful that they exist as an option. I do use a Windows phone, but that's because it suits my needs better than the alternatives. So, I don't dislike Microsoft, I just avoid them most of the time.
I don't think they are as bad as they used to be. They seem to have come to grips with open source and have made some steps in the right direction. VSCode is pretty nice to work with and they have a Shared Source Initiative program that many don't know about, which is another example.
Anyhow, I think using open standards and enforcing it by demanding support in the products we buy is probably our best chance at changing the industry. Our applications output something. There's no realistic reason, that I can think of, for that something to not conform to open standards. Then, we can select vendors of our choice, licenses of our choice, or create our own, by ourselves or through paying someone.
I will note that it is understandable but sad that more companies aren't willing to write their own software. I see that as related to the problem. They'd prefer to use COTS software. Yeah, it's less expensive and does sometimes make sense, but if they wrote it themselves they could more easily port it to various operating systems and architecture. Ideally, those OSes and architecture would conform to open standards and make it even easier as time progresses.
I'm not sure if we will reach that point, but it'd be nicer - I think.
Price has nothing to do with control. The only way you have control over a piece of software, is if it is free software, no matter if you paid for it or not.