Microsoft has always stood for mediocre quality software so that's no surprise.

Also, they stopped caring about Windows because they want recurring service revenue. Making Windows a subscription service for consumers would outrage the users (even though they kinda already do this for business with Microsoft 365). So the consumer market is just viewed as a billboard for M365 and Copilot. So everything you see there is just lowball effort, even worse than their normal quality.

To do better?

It's demonstrably possible. And further, why does what some portion of Microsoft, a huge, multi-headed beast, does qualify as the bar for what is reasonable for users to expect?

To decide what tools are the right job for each project,

same expectation as always.

So many “let’s race-to-the-bottom along with the authority” comments on HN lately.

Dude: no! =]