And the official auth URLs are always such random crap that I'm surprised people don't get phished left right and centre.

No owners, no responsability, no incentive to fix it. Ticket grabbers and checklist markers.

I was able to take a 25 year break from Microsoft, from 2000 to 2025. Yet I was drawn back in because my son wanted to play Minecraft. This was the worst account process of any system ever invented, as far as I can tell. Plus in 2025 I had some interesting clients that are large corporations that use Microsoft as their core IT practice. The escape to the relative simplicity and consistency of AWS interfaces, from MS land, was the best part of the IT experience with that client. (With how much I've moaned and complained about AWS over the years, that last sentence is the most damning thing I can possibly say about Microsoft's products.)

Since some time around 2024, the problems started to grow way more numerous than they already were; the workarounds started to be disallowed; and more broken software started to be pushed as necessary for basic functionality. People were adapted to a certain level of breakage, but are seeing a different one.

Last time I remember them doing something similar was on the last days of XP / earlier Vista time. But it wasn't so bad at the time.

I guess it’s surprising because how ubiquitous their products are. You’d expect them to be of better quality considering everyone is using MS software one way or another.

This is why Microsoft is good, there is an entire industry around fixing their nonsense. They are being a job creator!

I remember windows 2000 being pretty rock solid. I used it as my gaming os for years while folks struggled with windows me and windows xp (IIRC, xp did eventually become pretty good)

microslop before invention of slop

That isn't true. Microsoft has made some genuinely good software over the years.

I looked into it and apparently just the launcher itself is 16GB because it's filled to the brim with extremely oversized videos and sound files, on top of an already overweight base.

All this is supposed to be the peak of game dev prowess. We've had like 50 years of game dev just to evolve to this. It's not just huge launchers - almost everything AAA that's made today feels like it was designed to appear flashy at first glance in some meeting for people who have no idea what they're looking at, while performance, technical features, and the most basic user experience considerations are thrown out of the window.

>The bad part is that Microsoft (generally) used to have some of the best QA in the industry

Blame Satya Nadella. He fired testers and turned customers to helpless beta testers.

This definitely does not extend to games. I remember microsoft games having terrible UX over a decade ago (not the game, the account garbage around it).

All problems with Microsoft products are design and intent problems, not engineering.

When did the offshoring happen, because Microsoft has been bad for a long time. Even in the 90s there were so many BSODs.