Isn’t it interesting how operating systems have a culture? From my early days of working with windows, it was completely normal for every other program to want to run itself at startup, no matter how useless it was to do so. And people just accepted it. They thought that computers literally get slower over time or something. Oftentimes I’d glance at someone’s system tray and see 15 icons or so.
On Mac and Linux though, this behavior is far less acceptable. Today on Mac it is by far worse than ever but still probably better than it was, say, on windows 98. On Linux I could literally install 50 apps in a row without any asking me (or doing it without asking) to run on startup.
It’s just up to what users will put up with. So windows consistently getting shittier shouldn’t really surprise us. People have put up with that from the beginning. Both in terms of the app ecosystem and the os itself.
Like we went through at least a decade on windows where most free apps people used would literally attempt to, or force malware on your machine, in the form of toolbars or other useless shit running in the background. People were so complacent they wouldn’t even uncheck those boxes when offered a choice in the installer. We really need better education in this world.