I moved largely away from Microsoft products in 2010 personally, and 2015 or so professionally. Just came back to them last year for a client.

What I am seeing are two really disturbing patterns: 1) really, really bad stuff that has been there for decades is still there, weighing everything down, for "backwards compatibility", and 2) a lot of horrible fluff and nonsense everywhere.

#1 is pretty self-explanatory, as I am editing docs in Word I am finding my muscle memory circa 1999 or so still works with it due to all of the formatting bugs that still exist.

#2 I saw with Windows 11 and the crazy adverts everywhere, seemingly random UI choices, half-broken or implemented tools and applications, and now random UI buttons thrown everywhere.

The 1-2 punch is devastating and makes using Microsoft products 10x more depressing than it was 10-15 years ago, and it wasn't a happy fest then either for me.

So to me, AI is just "more of the same" with Microsoft. It is more random shit thrown on the wall to see what will stick.