While I partially agree and it was a generalisation on my part, the tech you mentioned (Flash, Java, ActiveX) all came at a time to fill a gaping hole and they solved many problems of their respective time, yes, even ActiveX.
- Flash came at a time when the web was primitive, there was no other way of doing funky animations or creating web-based games.
- Java - not sure why this was mentioned, as it's (arguably) still a success - came at a time to be able to write code to run on multiple different platforms with minimal effort. And it's arguably still a success on countless back-ends to the web.
- ActiveX came at a time where again, the web was primitive, JavaScript was still in its infancy (to some degree), and it allowed not only desktop apps to talk to the web, but solved web front-end and back-end communication at a time when there was no ajax.
The problem with Microsoft trying to reinvent the wheel in Windows and re-writing foundations with .net only makes the OS ever more bloated. We have gone from an OS using only a few hundred mb of memory to over 4gb while sitting on the desktop, for doing absolutely nothing of benefit to the end user, majority of whom spend their time either gaming, or using a web browser, or standard Office applications.
To me, they've solved no real problems... unless perhaps Microsoft secretly hopes to enlarge the number of .net based apps, so they an eventually launch another phone/tablet product? Or perhaps they envisioned the collapse of x86 before Win10 came on the scene, and hope to be able to switch to any ARM implementation with as little friction as possible?
But to me, removing WordPad and then re-adding those features back into notepad serves no purpose. Each app has it's own use case and worked well, and seems another example of increasing bloatware into a lightweight app.