Windows 10 was a bit shit at launch too. They hadn't quite figured out how to orchestrate forced updates (e.g. no active hours or pausing updates for a week). The Start Menu was a bit of a mess for the first 5 years. Cortana was shoved down your throat. Dark mode wasn't even a thing. HDR support was basically non-existent and DPI support was ass. "Precision touchpad" support wasn't a thing, the Settings vs Control Panel split was way worse, things like WSL weren't a thing, notifications in Action Center were horrible to manage. The new Windows Terminal app hadn't been made yet... ssh/sftp wasn't built in.
What I 100% expect with every new release of Windows is that they'll have some genuinely good ideas, remove or break a ton of existing workflows trying to implement those changes but only getting them halfway to where they need to go, and then fix it over the coming years. E.g. with Windows 11 they rewrote the taskbar and it was missing drag and drop, positioning, clocks on multiple monitors, useful right click shortcuts on the taskbar, "Never Combine" to not group windows, the smaller taskbar, showing the text label next to things in the taskbar, and probably more I'm forgetting. At this point nearly all of those are fixed (small taskbar is about to be, position is still unthinkable for now apparently).
Typically I'll just move to the latest. Yeah, it'll suck to adjust at first, but quickly it'll improve and start to have features beyond the first. Some prefer to hang on to the previous one until it drops so the next one is already pretty fixed up. Either way, most folks end up liking the older versions even though most folks hate them at the start. Part of that is also rose colored glasses too though.
Well, you will always feel it with most software out there - we no longer track development cycles on specific large releases.
Seriously?
Except having to revert right click context menu and worse task bar I don't see bigger differences except more beautiful UI
Microsoft expects a large number of Windows 10 users to abandon their computer and purchase a new one. "Having a PC" versus "not having a PC" is a pretty big difference.
They will force laptop refresh cycle