Since I installed PowerToys[0] and activated Run, I barely use the taskbar to start any program. It works like alt+f2 on Ubuntu, which is the experience I find most useful.
Powertoys feels like one arm of Microsoft to fix windows’ shortcomings due to the other arm via an independent app rather than fixing the actual component because doing so is too fraught with politics and incentives.
So Microsoft does know how to fix the problems with Windows, but simply chooses not to because of internal politics? Because I keep wondering how such a big, well-established company full of smart people can create such a piece of crap as their flagship product.
I wasn't speaking to the quality of their decision making. A lot of their new UI fails to satisfy anything but the simplest of use cases but I'm sure it took a very long time and lots of meetings for it to get approved and deployed.
The Frankenstein period of old/new settings UI coexisting is further evidence of how painful ripping out OS functionality can be. I doubt anyone wanted to keep those dialogs around.
If you look at it from their incentives (serving you adds, getting you to use their products over competitor's, etc...) then it makes sense. Uniformity and Usability appears to be a secondary concern.
[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/