In fairness to Microsoft, that's only true for apps that don't use the official packaging format. Official packaging format? Yep, if you distribute your app as an MSIX file then you get:
• Integrated automatic uninstall (which is fast).
• Automatic online updates.
• Apps have their registry and AppData writes redirected to a private location, which Windows can then clean up. It's a bit like the macOS app sandbox but the app isn't actually sandboxed, it's much lighter than that and there only for clean uninstalls.
• No need to retain downloaded packages or installers.
• If you use the .appinstaller feature, only the parts of the package that the user doesn't already have are downloaded so apps that use big runtimes (electron, jvm, flutter etc) can turn into small downloads if the user already has such an app.
• Don't need admin rights to install.
• Integration with Windows network admin tools. MSIX is declarative so Windows can do things like make apps appear without them being actually installed.
• There's a tool that monitors other installers and converts them into MSIX files.
So Windows has solutions for a lot of these problems. Unfortunately developers don't know about it and that's partly because Windows has a lot of bugs, especially in Windows 10 (which hasn't been receiving bug backports for a long time now). The best way to get these features is to use Conveyor which is a tool that abstracts you from the packaging tech and automatically works around the bugs (Disclosure: I wrote Conveyor). It also extends it with other useful features like checking for and automatically applying updates every time the app is run (if you want that):
How is this fair at all?
1. This is "only true" for almost all the apps
2. A much better alternative without that waste already exists in 3rd-party apps, so no new packaging format is needed to fix it
3. Is this new shiny toy MSIX the one that doesn't even allow changing installation path?
The problems you're describing are technically problems of apps, not really problems of Windows (any more). Yes arguably the line is blurred, you can say this is a pedantic distinction because Windows = the apps that people use. But the tech is there.
MSIX indeed picks the install path for you but very few users want to change it these days. Chrome installer doesn't let you pick either.
The old tech is also the official OS one, so all the responsibility for not fixing it lies with the OS, can't blur it with the apps
Having a better alternative while still not fixing the old system does not shield the OS from this.
Neither does the existence of other bad apps like Chrome shield the new system from the blame for making the same obvious mistake, especially when the example of macOS with its simple bundled app folders that you can just drag&drop around has been right there the whole time
Your post went dead for some reason, but that seemed unfair so I vouched for you and upvoted it. We may not fully agree on this, but your discussion is civilized and should not have been flagged.
• Integrated automatic uninstall (which is fast).
• Automatic online updates.
• Apps have their registry and AppData writes redirected to a private location, which Windows can then clean up. It's a bit like the macOS app sandbox but the app isn't actually sandboxed, it's much lighter than that and there only for clean uninstalls.
• No need to retain downloaded packages or installers.
• If you use the .appinstaller feature, only the parts of the package that the user doesn't already have are downloaded so apps that use big runtimes (electron, jvm, flutter etc) can turn into small downloads if the user already has such an app.
• Don't need admin rights to install.
• Integration with Windows network admin tools. MSIX is declarative so Windows can do things like make apps appear without them being actually installed.
• There's a tool that monitors other installers and converts them into MSIX files.
So Windows has solutions for a lot of these problems. Unfortunately developers don't know about it and that's partly because Windows has a lot of bugs, especially in Windows 10 (which hasn't been receiving bug backports for a long time now). The best way to get these features is to use Conveyor which is a tool that abstracts you from the packaging tech and automatically works around the bugs (Disclosure: I wrote Conveyor). It also extends it with other useful features like checking for and automatically applying updates every time the app is run (if you want that):
https://hydraulic.software/