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In my experience, Windows is very far from a "it just works" OS.

It's the ambition as a home user OS though, like macOS. And in the discussion of "it just works" operating systems, who else are we to go by than the vendor ambitions? Personal opinions? In that case, neither is because both struggle to always work in all scenarios since their respective inceptions.

When the phrase originated, manually updating CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT were expected skills of a home PC owner. The idea of buying a device, plugging it in, and having it work without a complex setup was unheard of. "It just works" on the Mac meant the absence of a DOS layer, IRQs, command lines, etc.

AFAIK Windows has never been known or marketed as "it just works". It goes long way to maintain backwards compatibility, but lets not kid ourselves that it has any semblance to what Apple's "it just works" is supposed to mean.

In what universe has Windows ever been a "it just works" OS? Not this one.