Indeed.
An operating system, really, has only one function, and that is to enable the hardware to perform whatever tasks the owner bought it to perform. Any feature or characteristic an OS has can be fairly evaluated by considering whether that feature helps users (some of them, at least) to perform the tasks of his choosing on that hardware.
An operating system exists to run other software. It's not the star! It's not fun and exciting. The glory belongs to the various applications the user runs on that system. If an OS is doing its job, people don't really notice it... it just quietly does its thing behind the scenes. It needs to be stable, not just in terms of running without crashing, but in terms of ensuring that what worked before will continue to work into the foreseeable future.
An OS, by virtue of its function, has access to every bit of information that is stored on or passes through the hardware upon which it runs. It's a position that requires a great deal of trust, and because of this, it is imperative that an OS be crystal clear in its understanding (so to speak) that it has one and only one master, and that is the owner of the hardware which that OS was chosen to enable on behalf of that owner.
On all of these counts, Windows 10 fails miserably. No number of features or advanced functions or bells and whistles can ever make up for its abysmal failure in being what an OS is supposed to be. Until it gets the basics right, nothing else matters.
Windows 10 doesn't try to pretend that it serves the owner of the hardware first. When you can only defer updates, and only according to the rules Microsoft has laid out (it will decide for how long it may be deferred), it's clear who the master is, and it ain't you, cupcake. You can set the connection as metered, but Microsoft has already said that if it finds an update to be reeeeally important, it will go ahead and send it to you anyway, metered or not. You can set active hours, but only within Microsoft's limits... you can't set all 24 hours a day to active (since the computer is, you know, your property 24 hours a day). With Windows 10, it's only your PC part of the time, and blocking out a part of the day for Microsoft Time is not optional.
That, like so many other things in Windows 10, is not a feature or trait that helps the owner of the PC to put that hardware to work on tasks he wants done. It's his PC, so only the tasks he wants to do with it carry any weight at all. What Microsoft wants isn't secondary or tertiary in importance-- Microsoft's wants, simply, do not exist in context of an OS.
Windows 10 does a terrible job of being the stable, silent partner that lives behind the scenes and enables the programs the user wants to run to do their thing. It's like Lucy on I Love Lucy reruns, always trying to be the star of the show, getting glory for itself. As long as we're saddled with "Windows as a Service," this won't change, and it renders Windows 10 unfit for (any) purpose. There's too much change, too much code churn, too many new bugs (huge code changes always bring bugs), too many things breaking every six months.
If an OS is supposed to be a stable foundation, Windows 10 is the earthquake that never ends. It changes so much that Ivo Beltchev, developer of Classic Shell (which singlehandedly makes Windows 8/8.1/10 tolerable for many of us), has given up trying to keep up with the massive breakage with every new version. The last two releases of 10 have broken drivers designed for Windows 10; first with Clover Trail PCs with the Creator's Update, then every PC Razer sells with Fall Creator's Update. All you Clover Trail owners who were told (back during the GWX days) that your PC had been scanned and was compatible with Windows 10, with all drivers present and accounted for, the joke's on you-- those Windows 10 drivers that worked with 10240 aren't compatible with Windows 10 now.
If you want to keep using your hardware going forward, you'd better be sure that the vendors for every component within that PC intend to keep producing new drivers for as long as you intend to use the device, because the ones that work flawlessly now could fail completely with the next mandatory "feature" update that comes down the pike. What an easy and profitable way for hardware vendors to inflict planned obsolescence on their customers, making otherwise usable hardware arbitrarily obsolete whenever they want it to be!
Windows 10 will never be suitable for use as long as Microsoft sticks to this "Windows as a Service" insanity. It will never be fit for purpose as long as it fails to recognize that being in the privileged position of an OS necessitates showing loyalty to one and only one entity, and it's not Microsoft. No features can ever make up for what Windows 10 lacks as far as the basic qualifications of an OS... until those deficits are fixed, Windows 10 isn't a reasonable choice for any PC that does anything important. For me, it's not even on the list of options for 2020/2023, when extended support for 7 and 8.1 end. It's not even good enough to be considered to exist, such that it is now, let alone be a good choice.
This a**hole they have running M$ has hit an new all time low in terror tactics. I have 2 machines in which I'm going to install SSDs very shortly. Not to mention I'll probably have to perform oral sex on someone at M$ to get an XP machine back up and running, should that "need arise". <(pun sort of intended).
