Direct3D can be a good API, but Microsoft played dirty to make it succeed, and that matters.
If you were around those days, Microsoft said that OpenGL on Windows was going to be put behind a backward compatibility layer, with a performance penalty. All developers got scared and switched to Direct3D.
For this reason, I don't care if Direct3D is a good API. Direct3D is the reason of why most games cannot be ported into other operating systems or are forced to run on WINE (with issues and performance penalty), and is also the reason of why Windows has a larger market share than it should.
I really hope Vulkan takes off and replaces Direct3D for most uses.
I remember those anxious days before Longhorn's release. MS was making a lot of weird threats back then. All the "trusted computing" stuff, as well as the thinly veiled attempts at killing OpenGL on Windows. Despite my above waxing nostalgic about the API, I haven't built anything with D3D in years, for precisely the issues you mentioned. API design quality and performance are important, but they are far from the only factors that go into making such a decision.
My favorite is how I was able to guess from Intel's claims that the 915 chipset can't support WDDM because it don't have a "hardware scheduler" that it is probably referring to the "lost devices" in old DirectX that many programmers likely remember.
If you were around those days, Microsoft said that OpenGL on Windows was going to be put behind a backward compatibility layer, with a performance penalty. All developers got scared and switched to Direct3D.
For this reason, I don't care if Direct3D is a good API. Direct3D is the reason of why most games cannot be ported into other operating systems or are forced to run on WINE (with issues and performance penalty), and is also the reason of why Windows has a larger market share than it should.
I really hope Vulkan takes off and replaces Direct3D for most uses.