What a sarcastic comment. It may be true on average, but definitely not for everyone. I'm one of the counterexamples, because I think about it a lot, and I'm carefully considering my options and alternatives.
This doesn't deserve downvotes because it is entirely correct. Your average Windows user doesn't know about this let alone think about it. The number of people who know and care about this are an extreme minority.
It completely deserves downvotes because the question was addressed to Windows users of this forum, who are the sort of person who would think about it. There's no call to insult Windows users just because they use Windows.
I'll just keep disabling everything I don't like insofar as it's possible. I'm focusing on pragmatism. I've used Linux on the desktop in the past, and the amount of work required to make things keep running smoothly and the amount of things I can't run natively outweigh the feel-good benefits of less data collection. It's vastly more convenient to know my computer will be working every day, and I can run whatever Windows-targeted software I want without any hassle. Whatever I need for development can be run on WSL with minimal effort as well (occasionally WSL will have minor issues, but it's infrequent and the solutions are pretty easy to find).
None of this is to insult anybody who prioritizes things differently, or anybody who feels more strongly about how much of a problem the stuff that MS does is. I just view it as one of the many things that it's easier not to worry too much about in order for things to go more smoothly.
I imagine you'll have trouble trying to find someone around here that's using Windows because they like it. People use Windows because they're forced to, and that's why Microsoft knows they can take full advantage of that and abuse their prisoners.
I can't believe the EU is wasting all this time on making it so you can... uninstall the camera app on your iPhone? Even the worst parts of iOS are so much less egregious than every interaction I have with Windows. At least people have the option to not use an iPhone. With Windows, people literally don't have alternatives. Their business' accounting software, or whatever domain-specific program is on there and has no plans of getting ported anywhere else.
They collect your money. The annoying part is that you can't build your own hardware. Not completely up to date with the situation, but I heard with the new CPUs you won't even be able to upgrade your RAM. The RAM will be integrated on the CPU.
I would strongly consider MacOS if I could run it on whetever machine I want. I would even pay for it.
