The sad part is that all of this is all self-inflicted in the name of “growth” for the shareholders. They absolutely could take 7, modernize it, call it “12” and release it as a lightweight, fast and more privacy-respecting OS. It would probably be far cheaper to make as well.
But that’s not what the Corporate elements of the company want. They see the OS as a platform to force feed to the users features that they can market as “lucrative” to the shareholders. Nobody else wants that. I predict that Windows 12 will have some sort of baked in “AI” that you can’t get rid of as a bare minimum.
But this is none of my concern. They’ve finally pushed me over the hump and now I’m 100% sold to Linux. It has gotten so much more approachable than it used to be. Especially with Mint.
Microsoft needs to be broken up.
Any company that can be so blatantly anti consumer and still makes boatloads of money is obviously abusing its dominant position on the market.