Who the Hell Still Uses Windows
It’s not even the 3rd best operating system
I grew up with Windows. Late 90s, early 2000s. It was great. Windows XP. From then on, Windows went downhill.
Microsoft keeps telling us that Windows is evolving.
Not sure about that. It feels more like de-evolving.
The company is selling the idea that Windows 11 is now a “canvas for AI” and an “agentic operating system”.
Agentic… ah, we love our buzzwords.
The truth is, Windows hasn’t felt like “our” computer in a long time. It feels like Microsoft rented out space inside our machines and keeps adding more tenants.
Ads in the Start menu. Forced online accounts. A constant push to use OneDrive for everything. Forced updates. And now AI peeking over our shoulder everywhere. Badly designed.
Shouldn’t be surprised. Microsoft was never good at design. Or UX. Or most of anything user-related.
Microsoft is B2B (business to business). It always has been. And that shows. More than ever before.
The good old days
As I said, I grew up with Windows. Many of us did.
We grew up with Windows XP. It used to be the normal thing to use. Windows XP literally felt like home. Windows 7 was okay. From then on, the road got really bumpy.
Vista was a dumpster fire.
Windows 10 was chaos. Got finer after its chaotic start. Actually usable.
But Windows 11, especially lately, turned into something else entirely. Something that treats us less like users and more like data points.
But Microsoft doesn’t care
They never did. But they sure as hell won’t now.
Microsoft is absolutely crushing it financially.
The company is worth around 3.8 trillion dollars and marching toward 5.
That climb started when Satya Nadella took over in 2014 and pivoted the entire business into cloud, Azure, and enterprise services.
That’s where the money is. Not grandma’s laptop. Not indie creators. Not you, not me, not anyone… non-business-y.
And once you understand that, suddenly Windows 11 makes perfect sense.
Windows 11 is not built for users
It’s not built for us. It’s built to funnel us into Microsoft accounts, subscriptions, cloud storage, and Copilot features that keep us plugged into their ecosystem.
The operating system is basically a sales funnel now.
Take ads. You can pay for Windows and still get ads. Ads in the Start menu. Ads in File Explorer. Ads disguised as “recommendations”.
Imagine buying a car and the dashboard runs sponsored content from Honda.
That’s how we live now.
Or the forced updates. If you hit “not now”, Windows seems to read it as “please, absolutely now”. I
f the update bricks your machine right before a deadline, well, that’s your problem.
“Sorry, Windows had to install 174 security enhancements and then silently reboot while I was writing that report.”
Not my fault.
Locked out
But Microsoft didn’t stop at annoying us. They also locked people out. When they ended support for Windows 10, about 400 million users were still on it.
Many of them wanted to upgrade but couldn’t, because Windows 11 introduced a hardware requirement called TPM 2.0.
On paper, it’s a security chip.
In practice, it was a gatekeeper. Perfectly fine computers suddenly became “not compatible”. You could have a multicore CPU and loads of RAM, but without that tiny TPM chip, Windows basically said, “Nope, not you”.
That same TPM chip stores a hardware identity that ties directly to your Microsoft account. It can’t be changed or removed. It’s like a serial number for your (Windows) soul. Third parties can ping that ID through an API if you don’t know how to lock it down.
“Improving security” is now “knowing everything forever”.
Recall
Which brings us to Recall, the AI feature that screenshots your entire computer every few seconds so you can “search your memories”.
Boy, who made that up…
It sounds like a Black Mirror pitch. And sure enough, security researchers found that malware could potentially access the Recall database.
Banking details, private messages, everything.
Microsoft said, “Relax, it’s local.” Which is technically true, but nothing stops the AI from analyzing your local data and reporting findings without you ever noticing.
Local isn’t equal to private.
Combine all this long enough and people get tired. Exhausted. Tired enough to switch.
Yeah, people do switch
Microsoft will learn this the hard way. People will switch. Business too. It just takes longer… and much more effort.
On one side, we’ve got the Linux crowd. They’ve always been the quiet cool.
They get transparency and control. Linux can do a lot. It’s gotten easier to install and use. Apps are plentiful. And the experience is sweet.
Linux has even gotten shockingly good for gaming, thanks to Proton and Steam’s push.
On the other side, macOS grabs everyone who wants a system that works without any hassle.
The M2 and M3 chips sealed the deal.
Yes, Windows still owns the market. About 70 percent. But it’s slipping. Slowly.
Microsoft’s future
Microsoft’s leadership knows the backlash is real.
This whole mess goes beyond AI features or annoying ads. It’s about priorities. Microsoft optimized Windows for shareholders, not users.
And that tradeoff shows up everywhere. Windows isn’t a product anymore. It’s a platform designed to make sure we never unplug from Microsoft’s services.
So who in the hell still uses Windows?
Honestly, people who have to. Who else in their right mind would?
Gamers. Office workers. Anyone whose company locked them into Windows-specific software. Windows isn’t dominant because people love it. It’s dominant because it’s everywhere, and it has decades of momentum.
But momentum isn’t everything. Microsoft knows this from Windows Phone.
And if Linux keeps improving and Apple keeps shipping stable hardware that doesn’t feel like spyware, Microsoft will feel the sting.
What saddens me is that Windows doesn’t have to be like this.
There’s absolutely a path back to a fast, clean, user-first operating system. But that would require Microsoft to make slightly less money.
And, well… good luck with that.
And yes, Apple ain’t perfect. Nowhere near. Linux isn’t either. But there sure as hell better options right now than Windows 11. Even ChromeOS is a better solution for the people who fit.
That makes Microsoft the 4th best operating system right now.
The Bottom Line
Windows isn’t dying. It’s trillion dollars deep.
But it sucks. The AI hype, the forced accounts, the ads, the surveillance-lite features, the updates that hijack your machine, the feeling that your computer is no longer yours.
All of it stacks up.
And many people are walking away. Some walk to Mac. Other to Linux. Some to ChromeOS. And others are giving up on desktop operating systems entirely.
That’s a good thing.
