It is receiving significant rewrites.

Yes, but that's just a dodge. There are 1.5B people running Windows. Tablets are great (I like mine) but it now seems clear that they aren't going to replace PCs on a grand scale any time soon. So PCs are still relevant, including yours. Since that's a fact it follows that the most popular PC OS would also be relevant.

People scoff at Win8 and call it a failure but that's only compared to Win7 and WinXP. It's been more successful than either OSX or Linux as far as PC OSs go.
And Win10 looks pretty nice already with about a year of dev time to go. Anyone who says it doesn't mater is just whistling past the graveyard.

A year or so ago I would have been shocked if you told me MS would release Office on Android. Now that they've gone that far and seem to realize that they're a Software company first, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they made Spartan builds for ios/android/chrome etc.

That seems to use a very different technique so it doesn't count as prior art.
Remember, it's not an idea that gets a patent is a particular implementation.

Programs|Startups is only one place where startup things can hide. The changes made to Task Manager in Win8 will show all the startup items, including those in the registry.

Yes. As much mind share as the Mac has achieved it is pretty amazing that it's still not selling much better than it was prior to the stupid "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads.

How old were these old Macs? Probably not 7-10 years old.

Want to see what's running at startup?
Right click the taskbar and open Task Manager. Click the Startup tab.

Boom. You can see and manager everything that runs at startup (either from the folder or via registry entry).

If MS had that much control over the OEMs everyone would be crying about how they are abusing their power again. Even when they did have a lot of control they didn't have *that* much control to keep OEMs from installing crap. If you want a crap free system order it directly from the Microsoft Store. They configure all of those systems and remove all the crapware. That's about the best they can do.

They need (yet again) to do a better job of marketing. The MS App Store doesn't just carry "new ui" apps. Developers can also submit links so people can find desktop apps and get them from the developer's site. Not perfect but still better than cnet.

Why does windows keep this antiquated process around? What would you suggest? Maybe they should have curated store where people could go to get apps with a high level of confidence that they'll be safe. Hmm, that might just work. They would have to be careful and not switch to that new system all at once though since that would surely backfire and piss everyone off. They'd have to slowly tighten the screws over a period of releases.

You should write them and make sure they know of this plan...

So if I have a Nexus phone I'll get the patch that fixes this? Or is it true that Google isn't patching it?

This is the year?

If you're right they blew it. They should have blamed Russia and added more pressure. As it happens I don't think they're just making stuff up.

that we not get it all at once please.