https://youtu.be/5KHCLBqRrnY?t=5849

like if apple is doing it, and microsoft is doing it in their ARM build... what is the EU doing or imposing, exactly, that is so problematic for the x86 branch of microsoft?

the more reasonable interpretation (ignoring microsoft's excuses) is that microsoft is more constrained by the legacy nature of their x86 product. they can't just sunset it, because it'll break a billion shitty applications that are very important to one specific factory customer running their thing with a kernel hook that is long-since EOL'd or whatever.

What they mean is they don't want to, and the EU is just a convenient scapegoat for some unfortunate business realities.

No. The EU only mandated that Microsoft give other vendors the same access they themselves use to do the same thing. This was the wake-up call to Microsoft to stop doing it that way, and in stead build a more secure API for themselves as well as others to use. But they preferred to sleep through it, for another fifteen years.

They didn't “want to do the exact same thing”; if they had wanted to, they could have done it.