My exact thoughts the last week.

I'm curious how many people started their hobby or career by just dabbling in Paint or whatever other bundled Windows program. The equivalent of that does still exist to some extent (is Garageband included by default on iOS? Or MacOS for that matter?), but the world has clearly changed. And sure, there's a whole world of apps out there that you could go and download, but 90% of it is garbage, and the remaining 10% is locked behind a login and choice paralysis, so it'll never be discovered by kids today unless they get lucky (recommendations by other people, seeing someone else doing something cool and asking what that app is).

Sorry, I agree with the sentiment of wanting a computing environment that’s easy for kids to approach and not too much walled garden, but “last bastion of hope is Windows”???

I agree with the post, but it is not just operating systems, and it has been going in the 'closed wall' direction since before WinXP.

We had programs like 'pidgin' that allowed chatting with different protocols, whereas now even I (a Linux nerd with 30 years IT experience) have no clue how to take a backup of my Whatsapp/Facetime/... conversations. Completely closed protocols are winning over open ones.

There is a similar process going on with websites; they used to be open and readable for everyone. Today I cannot access most pages that are sent to me via mail or that are linked in forums, unless I create an account and agree to share everything with 799 partners. Never mind that all links are now safelinks.protection.outlook.