Not just azure but Microsoft 365
They're no longer a software company, they're a services company. Windows is no longer a huge part of their revenue.
Newer versions of Office defaults to the cloud directory when you are trying to save a file. It's an absolute hassle to do something as simple as save a file to my hard drive.
I had to set up my wife's laptop with a MS account a while back, since she got an office license she wanted to use. She's a big Sims 3 and 4 player. Sims stores it's save files by default in the "my documents" directory. Sims game save files are huge. The moment I signed in to a MS account on the laptop, the damn thing converted the whole user folder to a cloud folder, and subsequently started uploading dozens of gigabytes of Sims save files, without my consent or asking me beforehand.
Everyone loves 7 mostly because the mess of the 64-bit transition and the changed driver model had mostly been ironed out by the time 7 was released. It also actually had some new worthwhile technical features, mostly refined from Vista, that at least made a 2 steps forward 1 step back release. A feat Microsoft hasn't performed since.
All the while, Voidtools have been doing it better, for free.
It's still better than windows 10 and 11, but that's not saying much.
Apple is far from perfect but I haven’t seen any dark patterns make it into MacOS yet.
It's a tool. Not a religion.
I generally feel like Windows is a better OS with more active annoyances, while macOS is aggressively mid as the kids would say, but doesn't actively bother you as much.