I haven't found functionality to be "splattered" at all. In general, you have a menu on the left for top-level functions, and a button-bar at the top for other things - the layout feels really consistent to me, with the only exception I've noticed being Function Apps.
> inexplicably horizontally-scrolling
At least from a culture with left-right written language, it makes perfect sense to me. Alternatives would be several layers of dialog boxes, or expanding vertically, but I like the Azure portal's way
> AWS might look “dated”, but I can’t imagine the mindset that cares about that
It just feels ugly to work with it. But the bigger issue is the inconsistency - some parts have small variations, others are completely different; it feels very fragmented.
> If a console is how you’re evaluating your cloud provider you are several steps behind where you need to be
Again I'm afraid I disagree. You can work with Azure from a console using cross-platform Powershell Core, or the cross-platform Azure CLI (my preference). There are a host of REST APIs too. I've worked with numerous different Azure services, and I really haven't had any issues here.
> Microsoft support is barely English-literate even when you’re paying for it
On the (free) Microsoft forums, yes, they are complete and utter shit, and I don't know why Microsoft even still hosts them. But I've found the paid-for support at Azure to be very good, and there certainly haven't been any English language issues.