Windows 11 is Exhausting
Something has been bothering me about Windows for a while now, and I think Notepad is where it finally clicked. Not Windows Update. Not Copilot. Not the weird settings menus where half the options look modern and the other half look like they were found in an abandoned office park in 2006. Not even the Start menu, which somehow keeps getting redesigned by people who seem mildly hostile toward the concept of starting things. No. Notepad. That tiny little text editor. The blank sheet of digital paper. The thing you open when you need to paste something, jot something down, strip formatting from cursed copied text, or temporarily hold a sentence while you figure out where it belongs. Notepad is not supposed to be impressive. That is the entire point. It is supposed to be there. Quietly. Reliably. Without drama. So when Windows 11 users began running into situations where basic built-in apps like Notepad could fail because of account or Microsoft Store issues, I was like "are kidding me!?". Notepad. Not available. On your account. What are we doing here?
I need to be clear. At least right now, Windows is far from dying. It is not disappearing tomorrow. It is still everywhere. It is still the default operating system for a huge chunk of the world. It still runs businesses, schools, gaming PCs, offices, labs, help desks, libraries, and probably half the sad little Dell towers sitting under reception desks across America. But dominance and goodness are not the same thing. Windows can be everywhere and still feel worse. Windows can be the default and still become more hostile to the people using it. Windows can remain the operating system of work, schools, gaming, and enterprise life while also becoming a product that increasingly seems designed around Microsoft’s needs rather than ours. And I think that is the real issue. Windows used to feel like a tool. Now it often feels like a storefront wearing an operating system costume.
I Finally Switched
About a month ago, I switched to Mac as my primary computer. Not because I became an Apple zealot overnight. Not because I suddenly started wearing black turtlenecks and whispering “ecosystem” into the wind. Not because I think Apple is some pure and benevolent company that loves me personally. Apple is still Apple. It is a massive corporation with its own incentives, its own walled garden, and plenty of decisions worth criticizing. But I am going to be honest. Using a Mac has been a pure joy. It is visually stunning. The interface feels considered. The animations are smooth. The typography is beautiful. The hardware feels intentional. The operating system feels like it was designed by people who understand that a computer is not just a productivity machine. It is a thing you live with. A thing you touch. A thing you stare at for hours. A thing that becomes part of the texture of your day. And most importantly, the Mac gets out of my way. That is the whole thing. It gets out of my way.
I did not realize how much energy I was spending fighting Windows until I stopped. Fighting the prompts. Fighting the updates. Fighting the bloat. Fighting the restarts. Fighting Edge. Fighting OneDrive. Fighting Copilot. Fighting settings menus that feel like three different operating systems stapled together by a committee that communicates only through passive-aggressive Teams messages. I was tired of fighting for control of my own damn machine. That is what modern Windows feels like to me now. It feels like a machine I paid for, running an operating system that constantly needs to remind me who is really in charge. And I am just over it.
Windows 95 Was Magic
The sad part is that I do not hate Windows. Actually, it is the opposite. I have loved Windows. I mean really loved it. Windows 95 gives me a feeling no modern operating system has ever been able to replicate. Not macOS. Not Linux. Not even the venerable, legendary Windows XP. And I loved Windows XP. Everyone loved Windows XP. Windows XP was the golden retriever of operating systems. Loyal, slightly goofy, somehow always there. But Windows 95 was different. Windows 95 felt like the future had arrived in your house and asked if it could sit at the kitchen table. It was simple. It was cool. It had personality. The Start button felt iconic. The desktop made sense. The little icons had that beautiful almost 8-bit and 16-bit adjacent charm, where everything looked just pixelated enough to feel like technology but still friendly enough to invite you in. It was not sterile. It was not soulless. It had a visual language. It had taste. Maybe not Apple-level taste. Let’s not lose our minds. But it had something. It had a sense of itself. It had a feeling. It made the computer approachable without making it feel condescending. Windows 95 changed the world because it made personal computing feel personal. Then Windows 98 came along and basically said, “hold my beer.”
And my God, do I have fond memories of that era. Coming home after middle school. Signing onto AOL Instant Messenger. Hearing the little door sound. Messaging friends. Picking the perfect away message like it was an act of literary self-expression. Playing StarCraft or Diablo on Battle.net. Watching the internet become something you could actually live inside for a while. That version of Windows lives in my memory alongside CRT monitors, beige towers, dial-up sounds, translucent plastic, demo discs, cheat code websites, and the strange magic of realizing that the computer was not just a machine for adults. It was a portal. It was games. It was friends. It was writing. It was music. It was forums. It was discovery. Windows was the place where a whole generation learned how to be online. And that is why the current state of Windows feels so depressing. Because I remember when it felt like mine.
What Happened After Windows 7, Man?
Windows 7 was probably the last version of Windows that felt broadly coherent to me. It was not perfect, but it felt like an operating system. A real one. It felt stable. It felt familiar. It felt like Microsoft had taken the lessons of XP and Vista and landed somewhere sensible. It looked good enough. It worked well enough. It mostly respected the basic relationship between person and machine. Then everything got weird. Windows 8 was Microsoft deciding that every computer needed to become a tablet, whether or not anyone asked for that. It was one of those moments where a company becomes so obsessed with chasing the future that it forgets what people are actually doing in the present. Windows 10 improved things, but it also introduced the modern era of Windows as a service. Constant updates. Constant changes. Constant nudges. Constant little reminders that the operating system was no longer a finished product you installed, but a living platform that Microsoft could keep reshaping underneath you.
And then there was Windows 11. The funny thing is, the main reason I even had Windows 11 in the first place is because during that early Windows 11 rollout era, my Windows 10 machine basically decided it was time. I do not remember sitting there with joy in my heart, making some grand informed choice to embrace the future. I remember the upgrade pushing itself into my life like an unwanted houseguest with a suitcase and no return ticket. I went to bed one night with Windows 10, and woke up the next morning with Windows 11. What a headache that was. One day I had Windows 10, which was annoying but familiar. Then suddenly I was dealing with Windows 11 and all of its little changes, all of its little assumptions, all of its little “we moved this because we know better” energy. It felt less like I upgraded and more like my operating system changed the locks while I was out getting groceries.
And Windows 11 has taken that feeling and made it prettier in some places, worse in others, and more exhausting overall. It is disjointed. It is bloated. It feels like a Frankenstein operating system stitched together from old Control Panel bones, new Settings app skin, enterprise policy organs, Microsoft Store tendons, and AI limbs nobody asked for. There are moments when Windows 11 looks genuinely nice. Then you click one layer deeper and suddenly you are in a dialog box that looks like it was summoned from Windows NT by a wizard with a grudge. That is the thing that drives me crazy. It is not just that Windows is ugly, although sometimes it is. It is that Windows is inconsistent. It does not feel like one vision. It feels like competing internal departments all got to keep their little kingdom, and the user experience is just where the borders clash. Modern Windows is not one operating system. It is a group project. And it shows.
There is also the fact that Microsoft is pushing people forward whether they are emotionally, financially, or practically ready for it. Windows 10 support ended on October 14, 2025. For a lot of people, Windows 10 was the last version that felt tolerable. Not beloved in the way Windows 95, Windows 98, XP, or even Windows 7 were beloved, but tolerable. Stable enough. Familiar enough. Annoying, sure, but not always actively hostile. Now that era is ending. And what is the path forward? Windows 11. The operating system full of account pressure, hardware restrictions, AI integration, Microsoft Store weirdness, OneDrive nags, Edge begging, telemetry, and design choices that make me feel like I have somehow become a guest user on my own computer. This is where the whole thing starts to feel less like progress and more like coercion. I am not saying nobody should upgrade. Security matters. Modern hardware matters. Software cannot be supported forever. I get all of that. But there is a difference between moving forward because the next thing is better and moving forward because the old thing is being taken away. That is the mood around modern Windows for me. It does not feel like invitation. It feels like pressure. Upgrade. Sign in. Sync. Accept. Enable. Try this. Use that. Restart now. Restart later. Actually, no, restart now. Also, would you like to use Edge? No, Windows. I would not.
The One-Time Purchase Problem
Part of this is bigger than Windows. Good software that people buy once is bad for infinite growth. That sounds ridiculous, but it is basically the story of modern technology. If you sell someone a piece of software and it works well, they may just keep using it. Horrifying, I know. Imagine the shareholder panic. Someone buys a useful thing and then keeps using the useful thing they bought. Society may never recover. But that used to be normal. You bought software. You installed it. It worked until it did not. Maybe you upgraded later because the new version was better, or because your hardware changed, or because you actually wanted the new features. But the relationship was clearer. You paid for a tool. Now the dream is different. The dream is recurring revenue. Subscriptions. Accounts. Cloud sync. App stores. AI credits. Premium tiers. Services attached to services attached to services. The dream is not to sell you a hammer. The dream is to make you sign into Hammer Plus every month so you can keep accessing nails.
That is the shift. Windows itself is no longer enough. The operating system is the terrain on which Microsoft can sell, promote, recommend, remind, sync, analyze, nudge, and occasionally nag. Windows is still an OS, yes, but it is also a delivery mechanism for Microsoft accounts, OneDrive, Edge, Copilot, Microsoft Store, Game Pass, and whatever else gets stapled onto the experience next. This is why Notepad matters. Not because Notepad itself is the most important app in the world. It is not. That is why it matters. When even the simplest parts of the operating system become entangled with account systems, store infrastructure, AI features, or cloud logic, something has gone wrong. A plain text editor should not feel like it lives downstream from a licensing server.
The Console Lesson Microsoft Never Forgot
There is another piece of this that I think matters, and it comes from gaming. Which, honestly, feels right. So much of my relationship with Windows was shaped by games. StarCraft. Diablo. World of Warcraft, Battle.net. The weird magic of installing something from a disc and feeling like your computer had just become a portal to another world. But gaming also reveals something important about Microsoft’s long-term ambitions. Microsoft did not just look at consoles and see toys. It saw a threat. The original PlayStation mattered because it blurred the line between a game machine and a computer in a way that should have made Microsoft nervous. Sony was not just selling hardware. It was building an ecosystem. It controlled the machine, the developer relationships, the games, the licensing, the accessories, and the customer’s relationship to the whole experience. That is the dream. Not just selling software once, but owning the whole stack.Nintendo had already proved that consoles could be their own strange little kingdoms. The Super Nintendo was not trying to be a general-purpose computer. It was a game console through and through, with its own cartridges, its own logic, its own closed little world. Sony changed the feeling of that. The PlayStation used CDs. It felt more modern, more multimedia, more computer-adjacent. It was still a console, obviously, but it pointed toward a future where the living room machine could start eating some of the personal computer’s cultural territory. And Microsoft saw that. Of course it did. Microsoft had spent years becoming the default layer underneath personal computing. Windows was the place software lived. Windows was the platform. Windows was the thing that made the computer legible to ordinary people. But consoles created a different economic model. Sony could make money from the hardware, the licensing, the games, and the ecosystem. It could charge developers for access to the world it built. That is very different from selling someone Windows and hoping they buy the next version someday.
So Microsoft made the Xbox. And the funny thing about the original Xbox is that it was barely pretending not to be a computer. It was big because it was basically a PC in a console shell. It used familiar Microsoft technologies, familiar development ideas, and DirectX, which was already part of Windows gaming. It made sense. If you are Microsoft and you want into the console business quickly, you build the console out of what you know. But the deeper point is not just that Microsoft wanted to compete with Sony. The deeper point is that Microsoft wanted the kind of ecosystem power Sony had. The kind where the machine, the storefront, the account, the software, and the customer all live inside one controlled pipeline. That is the part that connects directly to modern Windows. Xbox was not some random side quest. It was Microsoft learning how powerful a walled garden could be. And then you can see the same instinct everywhere. Xbox Live. Games for Windows Live. The Microsoft Store. Game Pass. The merging of Xbox identity with Windows identity. The same account following you from console to computer to laptop to store to subscription. On paper, that sounds convenient. In practice, it also means more of your life gets routed through Microsoft’s systems. Your games. Your files. Your purchases. Your settings. Your identity. That is the thing about walled gardens. They can be lovely when they are designed around the user. Apple gets away with a lot because, at least much of the time, the garden feels beautiful. Microsoft’s garden often feels like it was assembled behind a Best Buy by four committees and an intern with a staple gun. The problem is not that ecosystems exist. The problem is when the ecosystem stops feeling like a convenience and starts feeling like a trap.
This is why the Microsoft Store matters, even if most people do not think about it much. The store is not just a store. It is a philosophy. It is Microsoft trying to move Windows closer to the console model, where access, identity, purchases, subscriptions, and software all pass through a controlled system. That is why something as stupid as Notepad getting tangled up in account logic feels so revealing. Notepad should not be part of an ecosystem story. Notepad should not make me think about licensing, the Microsoft Store, account availability, or whether Windows knows who I am. Notepad should be the technological equivalent of grabbing a sticky note from a drawer. But modern Windows keeps finding ways to make simple things complicated because simple things are not profitable enough. A blank text editor does not create lock-in. A local folder does not create subscription revenue. A machine that simply does what you tell it to do does not generate the same kind of long-term ecosystem value as a machine that constantly routes you through services. That is the storefront problem. Windows still looks like an operating system, but more and more often it behaves like an entry point into Microsoft’s commercial universe.
I keep coming back to the word enshittification lately because I do not think there is a more precise way to describe what has happened to Windows. It is not that Windows 11 is completely unusable. That would be too simple. Honestly, that would almost be easier to talk about. Windows 11 still works. It runs the software people need. It plays games. It powers offices, schools, homes, help desks, classrooms, labs, and the thousand little systems that keep modern life moving. That is part of the problem. The useful thing is still in there. But it is buried. Buried under prompts. Buried under account requirements. Buried under Microsoft Store logic. Buried under Edge begging for attention. Buried under OneDrive trying to inhale your files. Buried under Copilot. Buried under telemetry. Buried under updates. Buried under restarts. Buried under features that feel less like improvements and more like corporate strategy. That is what enshittification is. It is not simply a thing getting worse by accident. It is a useful thing becoming worse because the incentives changed. First, the product has to be good enough to become essential. Then, once people depend on it, the company starts shifting the experience away from the user and toward extraction. More data. More subscriptions. More lock-in. More ads. More nudges. More ways to keep you inside the ecosystem. More ways to turn your attention, your files, your habits, and your patience into value for the company.
That is what Windows 11 feels like to me. It feels like the operating system is no longer content to be the operating system. It wants to be the store, the assistant, the cloud service, the browser recommendation engine, the subscription gateway, the search layer, the gaming platform, the AI platform, and the identity provider. It wants to be the room, the furniture, the lock on the door, and the guy standing in the corner asking if you have tried Bing yet. None of this makes the computer feel better to use! It does not make Windows feel more elegant. It does not make it feel more personal. It does not make it feel more respectful. It makes Windows feel heavier. Needier. More invasive. Less like a tool and more like a landlord. This is why the nostalgia matters. It is not just that I miss Windows 95 or Windows 98 because I was younger, or because AOL Instant Messenger and Battle.net live somewhere deep in my millennial soul. I miss the feeling that the computer was waiting for me. I turned it on, opened what I wanted, and did what I came there to do. It was not constantly trying to redirect me into someone else’s business model.
Modern Windows feels like the opposite of that. It feels like Microsoft looked at the personal computer and saw not a tool, not a workspace, not a creative environment, not a home for people’s work and play, but a surface area. A surface area for services. A surface area for accounts. A surface area for AI. A surface area for data collection. A surface area for subscriptions. A surface area for ecosystem pressure. That is the real enshittification of Windows 11. The operating system still contains the tool I loved, but it increasingly treats that tool as secondary to everything Microsoft can attach to it. Every prompt becomes suspicious. Every forced restart feels like an intrusion. Every Edge recommendation feels like a sales pitch. Every OneDrive nudge feels like a hand reaching toward your files. Every AI feature feels less like help and more like a company looking for another excuse to wedge itself into the quiet spaces of your workflow. That is why I finally hit the wall. I was not just tired of Windows 11 being annoying. I was tired of feeling like my computer had been slowly converted into someone else’s platform strategy. I was tired of the machine asking me for things. I was tired of the machine trying to manage me. I was tired of sitting down to work and feeling like I had to negotiate with the operating system before I could begin. Windows 11 is enshittified because it forgot the basic dignity of a good tool. A good tool does not constantly announce itself. A good tool does not need to be the center of attention. A good tool does not turn every interaction into a service opportunity. A good tool does not make the user feel like a tenant. A good tool gets out of the way. That is what Windows used to do for me. That is what my Mac does for me now.
And that left Mac. So I switched. My MacBook Air is now my main machine. Most of the time, it sits docked on my desk. One Thunderbolt cable connects it to my setup, and that is it. Simple. Clean. Easy. When I need Windows for gaming, I switch over to my Windows system. No drama. No grand ideological purity. No pretending one machine has to do everything. The Mac is my daily driver. The Windows PC is for gaming. And honestly, that balance feels great. The Mac gives me the thing I was missing: calm. That might sound strange when talking about a computer, but it is true. macOS feels calm to me. It feels visually unified. It feels intentional. The Apple ecosystem works in a way that still feels a little bit like magic when you are used to everything being a fight. Messages, photos, AirDrop, iCloud, the way devices hand things off to each other. It all feels like part of the same world. Again, Apple is not innocent. I know the garden has walls. But at least the garden is pleasant to sit in. With Windows, I felt like I was standing in a strip mall parking lot while six different signs yelled at me to try Bing. There is a difference.
I know how easy it is to dismiss this kind of argument as nostalgia. And sure, some of it is nostalgia. Of course it is. I am a millennial. Windows 95 and Windows 98 are wired directly into some soft emotional part of my brain. AOL Instant Messenger. Battle.net. Diablo. StarCraft. Middle school and then high school. Away messages. Dial-up. The little thrill of being online when being online still felt like entering a hidden world. That stuff matters to me. But nostalgia is not the whole argument. I do not want to go back to 1998. I do not want dial-up internet. I do not want driver conflicts. I do not want beige towers because the entire computer industry collectively decided joy was illegal. I do not want to troubleshoot a sound card so I can play a game. The old days were not better because they were old. Some things were better because the relationship between user and machine was clearer. You turned on the computer. You opened the thing. You did the thing. That was it. There was no battle pass. No cloud upsell. No AI sidebar. No notification telling you that your files would be happier in OneDrive. No operating system trying to turn every action into an account-based ecosystem event. The simplicity was not primitive. It was respectful. That is what I miss. Not the limitations. The respect.
The best tools disappear into the work. That was always the quiet magic of Notepad. It did not try to impress you. It did not try to become a platform. It did not need a brand identity beyond being the thing that opened when you needed a blank space. And maybe that is why the Notepad issue feels so symbolic. Because when even the blank page gets pulled into the machinery, the problem is no longer just Windows 11. The problem is a technology culture that has forgotten the dignity of leaving things alone. Microsoft does not need to reinvent Windows around AI. It does not need to make every app smarter. It does not need to make the desktop more connected, more personalized, more recommended, more cloud-enhanced, or more alive with helpful little prompts. It needs to make Windows feel like mine again. That is the whole thing. Until then, my MacBook Air is docked on my desk, quietly doing what I need it to do. My Windows machine is still there for gaming. I have not abandoned Windows entirely. I am not pretending I have reached some pure technological enlightenment. But I know which machine feels like home now. And it is not the one that keeps asking me to sign in, sync up, restart, update, accept, enable, subscribe, or try Copilot. It is the one that opens, works, and gets out of my way. Honestly, after years of fighting with my own computer, that feels revolutionary enough.
Modern Windows feels like the opposite of that. It feels like Microsoft looked at the personal computer and saw not a tool, not a workspace, not a creative environment, not a home for people’s work and play, but a surface area. A surface area for services. A surface area for accounts. A surface area for AI. A surface area for data collection. A surface area for subscriptions. A surface area for ecosystem pressure. That is the real enshittification of Windows 11. The operating system still contains the tool I loved, but it increasingly treats that tool as secondary to everything Microsoft can attach to it. Every prompt becomes suspicious. Every forced restart feels like an intrusion. Every Edge recommendation feels like a sales pitch. Every OneDrive nudge feels like a hand reaching toward your files. Every AI feature feels less like help and more like a company looking for another excuse to wedge itself into the quiet spaces of your workflow. That is why I finally hit the wall. I was not just tired of Windows 11 being annoying. I was tired of feeling like my computer had been slowly converted into someone else’s platform strategy. I was tired of the machine asking me for things. I was tired of the machine trying to manage me. I was tired of sitting down to work and feeling like I had to negotiate with the operating system before I could begin. Windows 11 is enshittified because it forgot the basic dignity of a good tool. A good tool does not constantly announce itself. A good tool does not need to be the center of attention. A good tool does not turn every interaction into a service opportunity. A good tool does not make the user feel like a tenant. A good tool gets out of the way. That is what Windows used to do for me. That is what my Mac does for me now.
I Almost Chose Linux, but Landed on Mac
When I finally reached the point where I knew Windows could no longer be my main operating system, I really only had two realistic choices. Linux or Mac. And listen, I understand the Linux argument. I really do. There is a part of me that loves what Linux represents. Openness. Control. Community. Freedom from the corporate nonsense. The ability to make your computer actually yours again. That all appeals to me deeply. But I am also a higher education career professional. I do not have time to spend a Tuesday night figuring out why something that should work does not work. I do not have time to troubleshoot whether a platform I need for work behaves properly on my operating system. I do not have time to live in workaround mode. I use Microsoft Office daily in my job, and I do not want to be relegated to the browser-only version just because my operating system made a philosophical point. That is not a dig at Linux. It is just my reality. My computer is not a hobby first. It is a work machine. It is a writing machine. It is a teaching machine. It is a design machine. It is a research machine. It needs to support the professional ecosystem I actually live in, not the one I wish existed.And that left Mac. So I switched. My MacBook Air is now my main machine. Most of the time, it sits docked on my desk. One Thunderbolt cable connects it to my setup, and that is it. Simple. Clean. Easy. When I need Windows for gaming, I switch over to my Windows system. No drama. No grand ideological purity. No pretending one machine has to do everything. The Mac is my daily driver. The Windows PC is for gaming. And honestly, that balance feels great. The Mac gives me the thing I was missing: calm. That might sound strange when talking about a computer, but it is true. macOS feels calm to me. It feels visually unified. It feels intentional. The Apple ecosystem works in a way that still feels a little bit like magic when you are used to everything being a fight. Messages, photos, AirDrop, iCloud, the way devices hand things off to each other. It all feels like part of the same world. Again, Apple is not innocent. I know the garden has walls. But at least the garden is pleasant to sit in. With Windows, I felt like I was standing in a strip mall parking lot while six different signs yelled at me to try Bing. There is a difference.
Microsoft Has No Taste, and It Shows
I wrote recently about the idea that Microsoft has no taste, and I keep coming back to that because it explains something technical language does not quite capture. This is not just about features. It is about feeling. Apple products feel like someone cared about the person using them. Not always. Not perfectly. But often enough that the difference is noticeable. The fonts. The animations. The little interactions. The way the mouse cursor enlarges when you lose it. The way windows minimize into the Dock. The way the interface has weight and movement and polish. These things are not life-changing individually. But collectively, they tell you something. They tell you someone thought about the human being at the keyboard. Microsoft products, by contrast, often feel like they were designed for an abstract productivity unit. A worker. A tenant. A license holder. A data source. Someone inside an enterprise contract. Someone who needs access to approved tools and can be nudged toward approved services. That is why Windows feels hollow even when it works. It does the job, technically. But there is no warmth in it. No soul. No sense that anyone making the thing had any particular feeling about what it would be like to live with it every day. And I did not realize how much that mattered until I switched to Mac. The tools we use become part of the texture of our lives. They shape our mood. They shape our workflow. They shape how much friction sits between intention and action. If I sit down to write, I want to write. I do not want to negotiate with my operating system.
Lets pivot a bit and talk about the disaster that is Windows Recall. Recall is one of those features that sounds like it was invented in a conference room where every person had completely lost contact with normal human instincts. The pitch is basically this: your computer periodically takes snapshots of what you are doing so you can search back through your activity later. In theory, I can understand the appeal. We have all had that moment where we remember seeing something but cannot remember where. Was it in an email? A webpage? A document? A Teams message? A PDF? A tab we closed three existential crises ago? But my first reaction to a computer taking regular screenshots of my activity is not joy. It is not wonder. It is not “wow, the future.” It is, very simply, absolutely not. Microsoft says Recall snapshots are stored locally, encrypted, and not shared with Microsoft or third parties. That is better than the nightmare version of this feature, obviously. But even then, the fact that this is where we are now is wild. We have reached the point where a major operating system feature needs to reassure us that the screenshots it takes of our lives are not being sent away to corporate servers. That reassurance does not make me feel better. It makes me feel like we have lost the plot.
And this is where the Windows privacy conversation gets slippery. Recall snapshots may be local according to Microsoft, but Windows itself still sends diagnostic data back to Microsoft. Microsoft even has a Diagnostic Data Viewer so you can review the diagnostic events your device is sending. Think about how strange that is. We are so far into this world that the operating system comes with a tool to help you inspect the data trail it is already creating. I understand the argument for diagnostics. Bugs need to be fixed. Security problems need to be understood. Modern operating systems are complicated. Fine. But from the user’s side, it all becomes part of the same feeling. The machine is watching. The machine is reporting. The machine is nudging. The machine is suggesting. The machine is not just sitting there waiting for me to use it. It is actively participating in a relationship I do not remember consenting to in any meaningful human way.
AI Is Not the Disease. It Is the Symptom.
It would be easy to blame all of this on AI, because AI is currently being shoved into everything with the subtlety of a raccoon entering a trash can -- emphasis on the trash can. Copilot is in Windows. AI features are appearing in apps. Search is being reimagined. Writing tools are being inserted into places that were perfectly fine being quiet. Every company seems convinced that what users really want is for every blank space on their computer to become a chatbot. But AI is not the root problem. AI is just the newest excuse. Before AI, it was cloud sync. Before cloud sync, it was app stores. Before app stores, it was bundled browsers. Before bundled browsers, it was whatever would protect the platform and expand the ecosystem. Microsoft has a platform. Microsoft uses the platform to advantage its own services in the most disruptive and annoying of ways. Users experience it as friction, bloat, surveillance, or loss of control. Microsoft promises improvements. Then the next thing arrives. AI makes this more obvious because it gives Microsoft a shiny new justification for inserting itself into more moments of computer use. Writing? Copilot. Searching? Copilot. Settings? Copilot. Documents? Copilot. Soon I assume Copilot will appear when I open the fridge and ask if I want a summary of my cheese. But the real issue is not whether AI can be useful. Sometimes it can be. The real issue is whether every tool needs to become a service, every service needs to become a subscription, and every user action needs to become a monetizable data point.
This really is an ownership issue. Not legal ownership in the narrow sense. I am sure somewhere inside a terms of service agreement there is a paragraph written by a lawyer whose soul left his body in 2014 explaining exactly what we do and do not own. I mean the feeling of ownership. The feeling that your computer is yours. The feeling that when you open a laptop or sit down at a desktop, you are entering your own workspace, not renting attention from a corporation. The feeling that your tools are there to serve your intentions, not redirect them. The feeling that the operating system exists to support your work, your play, your writing, your files, your weird little projects, and your life. That feeling has been eroding. Slowly. Then quickly. And it is not just Microsoft. This is everywhere. Streaming services remove shows. Digital stores close. Smart devices lose features. Apps become subscriptions. Cars get software locks. Printers, which were already demons, somehow become worse. Everything wants an account. Everything wants telemetry. Everything wants to live in the cloud. Everything wants to be a relationship. I do not want a relationship with my text editor. I want to type.
This really is an ownership issue. Not legal ownership in the narrow sense. I am sure somewhere inside a terms of service agreement there is a paragraph written by a lawyer whose soul left his body in 2014 explaining exactly what we do and do not own. I mean the feeling of ownership. The feeling that your computer is yours. The feeling that when you open a laptop or sit down at a desktop, you are entering your own workspace, not renting attention from a corporation. The feeling that your tools are there to serve your intentions, not redirect them. The feeling that the operating system exists to support your work, your play, your writing, your files, your weird little projects, and your life. That feeling has been eroding. Slowly. Then quickly. And it is not just Microsoft. This is everywhere. Streaming services remove shows. Digital stores close. Smart devices lose features. Apps become subscriptions. Cars get software locks. Printers, which were already demons, somehow become worse. Everything wants an account. Everything wants telemetry. Everything wants to live in the cloud. Everything wants to be a relationship. I do not want a relationship with my text editor. I want to type.
I know how easy it is to dismiss this kind of argument as nostalgia. And sure, some of it is nostalgia. Of course it is. I am a millennial. Windows 95 and Windows 98 are wired directly into some soft emotional part of my brain. AOL Instant Messenger. Battle.net. Diablo. StarCraft. Middle school and then high school. Away messages. Dial-up. The little thrill of being online when being online still felt like entering a hidden world. That stuff matters to me. But nostalgia is not the whole argument. I do not want to go back to 1998. I do not want dial-up internet. I do not want driver conflicts. I do not want beige towers because the entire computer industry collectively decided joy was illegal. I do not want to troubleshoot a sound card so I can play a game. The old days were not better because they were old. Some things were better because the relationship between user and machine was clearer. You turned on the computer. You opened the thing. You did the thing. That was it. There was no battle pass. No cloud upsell. No AI sidebar. No notification telling you that your files would be happier in OneDrive. No operating system trying to turn every action into an account-based ecosystem event. The simplicity was not primitive. It was respectful. That is what I miss. Not the limitations. The respect.
Bring Back the Tool
I do not need Windows to look like Windows 95. I do not need pixelated icons, startup sounds, or a Start menu preserved in amber. Technology should evolve. Operating systems should improve. Security matters. Accessibility matters. Modern hardware matters. The past was not perfect, and anyone pretending it was has never tried to install a printer driver from a CD-ROM while praying. What I want is simpler than nostalgia. I want Windows to remember what it is for. An operating system should be the thing that helps me operate the system. That is the job. Not to upsell me. Not to herd me. Not to turn every local action into a cloud-mediated account event. Not to make the simple things feel contingent on whether some store service is having a bad day.
The best tools disappear into the work. That was always the quiet magic of Notepad. It did not try to impress you. It did not try to become a platform. It did not need a brand identity beyond being the thing that opened when you needed a blank space. And maybe that is why the Notepad issue feels so symbolic. Because when even the blank page gets pulled into the machinery, the problem is no longer just Windows 11. The problem is a technology culture that has forgotten the dignity of leaving things alone. Microsoft does not need to reinvent Windows around AI. It does not need to make every app smarter. It does not need to make the desktop more connected, more personalized, more recommended, more cloud-enhanced, or more alive with helpful little prompts. It needs to make Windows feel like mine again. That is the whole thing. Until then, my MacBook Air is docked on my desk, quietly doing what I need it to do. My Windows machine is still there for gaming. I have not abandoned Windows entirely. I am not pretending I have reached some pure technological enlightenment. But I know which machine feels like home now. And it is not the one that keeps asking me to sign in, sync up, restart, update, accept, enable, subscribe, or try Copilot. It is the one that opens, works, and gets out of my way. Honestly, after years of fighting with my own computer, that feels revolutionary enough.
I leave you all with this unintentionally comical video of a YouTuber trying to do a comparison video of a Windows Surface and Macbook. It took almost 10 minutes before the poor soul could actually get to the point of the video because Windows 11 just could not stop getting in his way.
