I had this exact same thing happen to me a while back. Luckily the account was one I had created just for this one user group who required I become part of their AD domain to access MS Teams. I tried getting back into the account and hit the same roadblock this guy did. I didn't care that much and just abandoned the account.

I figured it was something that Microsoft would soon fix, as it was such an obvious cluster; I'm surprised the issue still exists.

Or just have a cable type column (which could be a pointer/foreign key back to a table of cable types, so you can add the cable with 4 ends that comes out next year).

Yeah that sounds even better and what I typically see in production databases

This has got to be the most Orwellian thing I've read today, and Microsoft saying this unironically is just bizarre:

“Windows openly enables applications and services on its platform, including various web browsers,” says a Microsoft spokesperson. “At the same time, Windows also offers certain end-to-end customer experiences in both Windows 10, and Windows 11, the search experience from the taskbar is one such example of an end-to-end experience that is not designed to be redirected. When we become aware of improper redirection, we issue a fix.”

This sounds like the ol' "IE is an inextricable OS component" routine.

We want our users to have choice, except in some cases in which we do our best to deny it to them.

Looks like Firefox should be able to replace my taskbar somehow then

If they could make it like the Windows 98 taskbar while they're at it, that'd be great

tbh it's annoying typing in a program name & getting search results listed. I just want to open a program by name without taking my hands off the keyboard

Reminds me of the famous "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black!" from Henry Ford.

Windows isn't targeting you, they're targeting your parents/grandparents who will unintentionally put their system in a non-standard state that makes it difficult for msft or anyone else to support them. They want to lock the system down to control the experience as much as possible. Unfortunately, they believe that this one size fits all.

Probably mean to ask this way, but why does this read like something written by a moron? Like it has this unprofessional condescending air to it.

Because it's hard to say "we're going to force you to do it the way we want" in an uncondescending way. It's even harder to supply a BS rationalization for why you're going to force them in an uncondescending way.