I purchased a newspaper, it had ads - which I couldn't disable.
I purchased a magazine, it had ads - couldn't disable.
I purchased a book - an ad for another book in the back.
I purchased a movie ticket - an eternity of commercials even after I arrived "late" to the show.
I purchased a cable subscription - still scads of ads, no way to get rid of them.
So taking ten seconds to deactivate ads in an OS isn't really the kind of outrageously onerous burden you're laying it out to be. I agree to the extent that it seems like a pointlessly minuscule revenue stream in comparison to the ill will that it generates. And it was deceitful to sneak the ads in after people had already upgraded from Windows 7 instead of making their intentions clear from the outset. Microsoft would probably generate more income with an option to permanently disable the ad experience (and telemetry) for a one-time fee the way Amazon does with their low-end Kindles.
The difference I see is that it breaks previous expectations. Ads in media have a long history, and there's a bargain that people understand (even if they don't fully understand the details).
Operating systems historically have not been like media. Perhaps this is the future (shudder), but pretending there has not been a difference doesn't get us anywhere. And it is jarring: compare it to one day, ads start appearing on your towels at home.
Personally, OS ads and invasive telemetry are way, way too invasive for me. Never used Windows as more than a utility thing for specific apps, but I'll never use Win 10 without crippling the mothership comms, and I'm moving away from OS X as well, because of the increasing cloud-everything centricity and the neglected unix subsystem.
Finally, this is probably a complaint specific to me and a not that many other people. I do systems engineering professionally. When OSes start doing things that I can't control and start communicating without explanations as to what, exactly, is going on for reasons that are not driven by my intent, I cannot trust the software. My machine, my environment, my rules.
People always jump to the phone comparison here. My phones are rather locked down too, snd I'm not happy about the direction, but can do little about that.
>Operating Systems are tools, not entertainment or informational media.
For your specific use case, sure. My Windows machine is essentially a game console to me though. Do I get upset when I see an ad on Xbox live? It's essentially the same thing to me.
Of course Windows isn't meant to be a tool for professionals. But it's great for what it is; an easy to use general OS that plays games.
