Not all users are equally valuable, and I'm guessing that people who disable telemetry are mostly Linux users who just keep a Windows partition around for a few games.
They may, for example, be heavy Excel users, with macros, etc. In why case now other OS is even an option.
In general I think Microsoft Windows has precious few tastemakers. It's a radically consumerist / default system. There are basically no bonding grounds, no places where tasteful Windows users emerge from, gather at. And how could these things emerge from a radically consumerist / default system? Consumer OSes are define by their overwhelming colossal hordes of default users with ultra low interest just scratching by. There is no imaginable place for an interested engaged Windows community to take hold.
Basically it takes way outsider communities to drive this indifferent passive receptive commumity of Windows users to good. The Linux users have tadte, care, empathy... entirely unlike 98% of users who simply passively consume what they are given.
i fall hard away from you. disagree very heavily. it's a tasteless undiscerning world versus people who have some real consideration, who engage. we haven't really figured out how to let the rest of the world engage in a choiceful system, there's still rampant casual violence & disdain for alternatives that in truth work fine.
regardless, there's precious few tastemakers & people with legitimatizable opinions. i can think of few better users than the linux users use lambast, shirk, disdain as the people who have tastes, who care. i dont know why you would so callously & casually disdain caring & community like this. way out of touch to me: what better more responsible authority might we turn to?
I don't think most users could cite what changed between Windows versions. 7->8->10->11.... it's been such a wash. But Linux users see a lot of little things they expected, now semi available.
Microsoft is definitely stealing from the best, and the best ideas are clearly originating on Linux & in open-source.
I cant find any evidence of a predecessor to Synergy on Mac. Synergy was launched in May 2001, initially for for X11.
Good ideas always happen elsewhere. GUIs getting ripped off of of Xerox is no surprise. Overall there is, I'd claim, extremely little genuine innovation in UIs. GNOME seems to be one of the few out there willing to keep re-beginning, doing radical refreshes, but it's still not like boldly vastly different than other things. But Linux users, with their libre attitudes, are out there exploring & finding what is possible & what makes sense, across dozens of window mamagers & thousands of add-on components & endless exploring/reconfiguring... not just consuming. Of course MS is watching & borrowing the emerging stuff.
Remember what assumptions get you!