Your conclusion strikes me as a bit defeatist. Managed systems might be 'better' for users now, but in the long term, they leave users with almost no agency, and that becomes a great opportunity for companies to abuse their position of power.

I also thing think that saying that something is annoying is dismissing what is actually a pretty dark pattern. What comes to mind is how modern day censorship works the internet. If you outright block someone's ability to visit a example.com, they will spot the censorship and try to find workarounds. If on the other hand, you simply introduce a 5% packet loss to example.com, people will blame the _website_ and not potential censorship.

What's to stop Microsoft for adding another 5 minutes of hassle to install chrome or firefox? You couldn't sue them for it, but it would be enough to destroy every other browser on the market.