> most consumers’ Windows PCs, and many Macs, are riddled with bad software (privacy invasive, resource hogging, and all sorts of anti-user shenanigans you’d ne

> most consumers’ Windows PCs, and many Macs, are riddled with bad software (privacy invasive, resource hogging, and all sorts of anti-user shenanigans you’d never think of) that App Store policies forbid. I can't confirm "most", but it's possible. A retailer can sell thousands of Windows PCs for $200 because of pack-in, preloaded apps license deals. It's one aspect of Apple's self image as a high end boutique brand that they forbid such avenues of monetization. They fear the entropy of enshittification. And it's possible to appreciate their paranoia... For my past sins, (some months spent in the 1990s Netscape group that licensed product placement on the home page), as a side project I've been refurbishing a neighbor's recently acquired collection of four Windows laptops, a 16-year-old iMac, and an HP all-in-one (like iMac) desktop. Customer states HP desktop is unusable, became too slow. This HP Intel Atom Windows desktop was thrashing its hard disk, unresponsive for more than an hour after booting. Because security: There were four (4) antivirus programs scanning the disk, intercepting runtime calls to windows api, doing antivirus stuff: - Windows Defender - Intel NetSecure ® - HP service apps - MacAfee antivirus suite Also Windows Update was scanning and installing crucial licensed apps like Candy Crush Saga and had just installed new Microsoft Edge browser. Edge was eager to help out with full-screen "Onboarding" to introduce awesome new features, had another instance that was a pop up widget to tell me that Brad Pitt was having Elvis' baby and homeowners in your area are using this one weird trick to gain financial freedom and you may also like Machine had a single channel of 4GB SODIMM and 500 GB of mechanical hard drive: "rotating rust" driving rotating tiles in the Start Menu. Thing is: this is relatively CLEAN setup. There were no scamming web toolbars. This was the setup shipped with the computer. Customer had added Microsoft Office 2016, Google Chrome, and had them well set up. This was an improvement over many of the Windows machines I have cleaned up in the past. The Mac was OK... for 2010. But that's another story.