wendell level1techs has been talking about how microsoft is specifically moving away from it in Windows on ARM (to some real short-term pain, in fact) so it seems self-serving to assert that they somehow cannot do it because of the EU. if that's the case, presumably their windows-on-arm efforts would have been dinged for it.

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.