This seems to ignore the possibility of Windows having done them in a UNIX-ish way to begin with, which would be infinitely better than what Microsoft came up with.

Windows had most of these APIs _before_ UNIX ever dreamed them up. You can jerk yourself off about the superiority of io_uring all day long, but it had been in Win32 for 15 years prior, and has kept compatibility throughout. I can't promise that io_uring will still be in the kernel by 2040.

So, yeah, speaking in hindsight is really easy.

PS: no, the UNIX way is also shit, just in a different way.