As a surface user, I must say windows 11 definitely has gotten -worse- for tablet usage too. 10 had a special "tablet mode" that did things like automatically keeping all app windows fullscreen, like a tiling window manager, and giving you a friendlier to touch start menu but 11 dropped the tablet mode. I ended up installing linux with Gnome and a tiler extension once I read that my particular tablet was compatible and I'm much happier for it.

The design compromises have become really hard to justify even when you're coming from the point of view of the minority among us who use hybrid devices. It's difficult to tell who Windows 11 is for. They want to imitate the macOS dock but even macOS has less limitations, you can drag and drop a document onto the dock, you can drag a folder and have a peek in the inside of the folder when you click it, you can't do that with the 11 taskbar, which only accepts software shortcuts. The windows 11 taskbar is an abomination and the worst piece of UI I have ever used in my life.

It was possible to add documents, folders etc to "quick launch" which was introduced to windows 9x along with Internet Explorer's active desktop. It's just amazing how the modern windows UI has become inferior to decades old tools.