"It was just to keep people from installing something other than Windows" seems very counter-indicated by it taking ~7 years for a Windows UEFI bootkit to come out, and 13 years for one for Linux.
...and this bootkit is not able to work if Secure Boot is set up.
UEFI is also a godsend in terms of fixing a lot of the legacy BIOS crap
And my bloody computer is potentially trying to make god-blessed network calls before the OS has even loaded, and before my machine even provides the bare minimum human interface, you want me to navigate cryptography?
The trusted computing initiative was a disaster to the learnability of the computing field.
Devs are users too. Especially the unskilled/ignorant ones.
...and this bootkit is not able to work if Secure Boot is set up.
UEFI is also a godsend in terms of fixing a lot of the legacy BIOS crap