“These new, questionable patches don’t appear to have any real value — for good or bad — and at the very least are just wasting time by upstream developers.”
That’s Windows in a nutshell. Ten of thousands of patches that do nothing but bloat the software.
“....nothing but bloat the software.”
Who needs Easter Eggs in an O/S?
Now, now, I've asked you a million times not to exaggerate.. lol.
What else I can say is apparently you don't like Microsoft's business model, that of selling space to third party apps. MS appears to be fairly successful with their business model without benefit of your opinion... Mmm? And you have choices, you don't have to use windows.
May I point out that, if you install Windows correctly, easy to do if you do if you research it, Windows will run smoothly, fast, and be trouble-free until your physical machine dies of old age. Or hire done to do it. If a new installation is not set up correctly, you will have bad kharma... popups, warnings, questions, menus so full you can't find anything... Do your setup and enjoy life. Windows is a great piece of software. Like a car, you have to learn how to drive it. Younger people have no problem, you may notice.