Most computers, by far, only have a single drive.
Context ...Most computers may have a single hard drive .... but when asked to do a system build, how many of your proposed builds or anyone's proposed buils here on TPU do not include an SSD ? We have not built, nor been asked to build, a single drive system in over a decade. Every build has had components chosen with the provision for 2 drives or the addition of a 2nd drive when budget allows. But why avoid the main point, why the assumption of multiple uses when ,,, to borrow a phrase "by far" most PCs have a single user ? Why the forced hard to find placement of user and application specific files inside a "user" folder ? If I have 5 Adobe products, why must i search for these files in my operating system folder instead of application specific folders ? Why is there no sensible file structure like ?
E:\Adobe
Adobe Common
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premiere
Two points here. First, those invasive tricks and subterfuge tactics were dictated by marketing weenies and misguided C-Level execs. Not the developers. And note Microsoft knows very well (in hindsight) that was a huge mistake.
And second, why did they want everyone to upgrade? That is just simple and good business sense to be able to concentrate its resources on 1 product than it is on many. This is in almost any industry. Ford is discontinuing making cars (except the Mustang) to concentrate on SUVs and F-series pickup trucks. The best restaurants have the smallest menus.
This distinction is relevant to consumers in no way that i can possible imagine. To borrow your restaurant analogy . I go into a restaurant, I order, the food arrives .... It's not what I ordered, it's cold, the chicken is raw and my pregnat wife's "virgin" cocktail contains alcohol. I have no interest in who scrwewed up, the server, the chef, the waitress. My only concern is that I spoke to the Owner the last time we came in about the problems and he problems continue. What difference does it make to the consumer what the developers wanted to do if it didn't get done ? I don't care if the chef rushed out the uncooked chicken or that the bartender put alcohol on my wife's frozen cocktail because they are times on order completion and the boss says, every order must be on the table in xx minutes. They new after their 1st attempt, after the 2nd and after each successive attempt. In no case did the negative feedback affect the decision making process because they had a contracts to provided mined data to their partners with minimum use targets that increased month to month as adoption rates increased.
When they failed to meet these targets, there were financial implications. The payment schedules which said "We'll pay you X million dollars for the 1st quarter provided that you provide user data from y million boxes " means that, with the dismal adoption rate it was costing MS gazillions. Each level of management doesn't care what excuses you have, so te onerous / sneaky stuff was going to continue until Win10 finally passed Win 7 as the dominant Windows version at the end of 2018.
The wanted everyone to upgrade for one reason ... cash flow. Your multiple reasoning is just another component of that and it's flawed. How does MS carrying costs for windows 7 change as the result of market share. Their costs are pushing out patches and updates. That does not change to any significant extent whether Win 10s market share is 10, 20, 30, ... or today's 41.7% .... Win 7 is 37.31%( per netmarketshare) ... Others sources have it at 58.63% / 31.22% but whatever the number is, it's totally meaningless. How does MS's cost for development of support materials vary whether it's downloaded ... for the sake of argument, let's say there's 1 billion Windows licenses. How would MS's expenses associated with Win 7 change if it's downloaded 350 million times or 1 million times ? If I charge $100,000 to design a water treatment facility, expecting 5 bidders to ask for plans that I have placed in dropbox ... if they have 30 bidders, how much would you be willing to pay because more people downloaded the files ?
The other analogies fall flat ... is Ford refusing to honor warrantees for the current model lines ? I worked in the restaurant business, so did my wife, 2 of my sons, my brother-in-law is a high end chef and I have 3 friends who own restaurants. The menu thing has no basis in fact. Is White Castle the world's best restaurant ?
github.com
Nobody said it did.