A core piece of enshitification though is that a product becomes Less Useful over time - Reddit and Twitter lose third party apps, Apple is making its desktop OS more "secure" (read: convoluted and does less stuff) every release. The things you Liked about it, goes away.
Windows, despite its legitimately annoying monetization strategy, has absolutely done the opposite - it does More Stuff every release, and the stuff it did before largely still works.
Adding ads is clearly doing "More Stuff" yet becoming "Less Useful". That is the most obvious counter example imo.
Another would be fragmenting the settings between the control panel and the new settings menu. It does more stuff (you have twice as many settings apps!) but it is less useful, because you are less likely to find the setting you are liking for.
Another example of doing more and becoming less useful is requiring a TPM for Windows 11. My security should be my decision. Not letting one install Windows obviously makes Windows less useful than if it could be installed.
In general (ie, not a Windows specific issue) ever growing hardware requirements makes the software less useful over time, as it can only run on a smaller and smaller subset of hardware. As software gets better, it should run on more hardware than it did before. Not less. Windows will simply not run on hardware from 15-20 years ago that is otherwise fully functional. That means it is less useful than it was before.
> is that a product becomes Less Useful over time
> it does More Stuff every release
I wouldn't say "doing more" is better. I'd be happy if it did a lot less. I don't care about most of the big new features in windows. I'd be a lot more happy they'd rework their old antiquated stuff that keeps making problems (drivers, registry, focus handling, etc. etc.).
> Apple is making its desktop OS more "secure" (read: convoluted and does less stuff)
What is apple really making less useful with time? For me I really like many of the new features. The only reason I stick to windows is that gamging is still horrible on macOS.
> I wouldn't say "doing more" is better. I'd be happy if it did a lot less. I don't care about most of the big new features in windows.
There are two levels of features here (maybe three) that we should consider:
- There are consumer facing features, the stuff pushed by marketing departments since it will grab the attention of customers and (perhaps) make it more desirable for customers. A lot of this is targeted towards specific groups of users, while being less useful to others, and goes out of fashion very quickly (assuming it ever went into fashion).
- There is the infrastructure. This stuff is harder to sell users on because relatively few people care about the details. It includes everything from exposing functionality to developers to improving performance and security. Sometimes it turns out this functionality is only of interested to a limited subset of developers. Sometimes it retrospectively seen as a problem that needs to be addressed. Either way it is very difficult to alter or remove because other software depends upon it. (Heck, even internal software depends upon it. While they may have the means to update internal software, that doesn't mean they have the resources to.)
I'm tempted to split the second category into two, but the net effect is the same so we may as well keep it simple.
As for the Apple thing, well, Apple has a more focused market. Choosing Apple also tends to be a conscious decision, while choosing Windows tends to be more a default position. For those reasons, I have no doubt that macOS is a better OS in the eyes of its users than Windows is in the eyes of its users.
Here's a few examples - software requires signing and App Store accounts (literally called "Gatekeeper") which causes problems with OSS, you can no longer write kernel drivers on Arm64, many apps now require an avalanche of Vista-style "Do you want to allow this Thing Y/n" prompts, many other apps have to walk users through clicking into security settings to e.g. enable screensharing or productivity tools that use a11y hooks, the list goes on and on. Software on the Apple platform is becoming Less Useful over time and the list of things you can Do keeps getting smaller.
Windows, despite its legitimately annoying monetization strategy, has absolutely done the opposite - it does More Stuff every release, and the stuff it did before largely still works.