The problem is the whole we-can-fix-it-later mentality that you have with every tech product these days. The cost of testing it properly to get it right is externalized to the customer, most of which don't know what they're getting into. And suddenly your home doesn't heat because Amazon's servers are down or your fridge is a botnet zombie or whatever. I know software is hard, but screwing customers should not be excused as rational economic decision making.
I get what you are saying, but I don't think its possible to release bug-free OS anymore due to the aforementioned complexity and near-infinite permutations. Crowd-sourced bug identification is almost an unavoidable given at this point. By this I mean there are dozens (if not hundreds) of common hardware configurations all running any assortment of thousands of 3rd party software applications all interacting with the OS, the internet and each other. Apple & MS do extensive sandbox testing, but how it will work "in the field" is almost unknowable until we see how it does with every possibly configuration. After interntal development and testing each release undergoes multiple developer 'betas' but even those can only illuminate certain flaws.
The most people that have used a piece of software I've written is about forty. All in identical software configurations and very similar hardware configurations. With proper testing, I can usually iron out most of the major issues, but sometimes the week new code goes live, an unforeseen issue will crop up and I'll have to go in and fix it. Scale that up to ten thousand users with a thousand hardware configurations and you'd need about 125x my resources just to be as good as what I can manage. Add a few hundred million configuration permutations and the testing resource requirements get very silly very fast. Even MS has "only" 124,000 employees. And they are writing far more sophisticated and error-prone software than I am. I'm not saying they couldn't improve, or that I would have recommended Win10 on release day in 2015, but making everything magically bug-free is a pretty tall order in this day and age.
Apple locks down their hardware and has total control over it. That can be annoying for various reasons as a user, but it means that they only have to test the new version of iOS on say, the ten most current iPhones (maybe 20 if we consider all hardware variants). That's a hell of a lot simpler than making sure Windows 10 works properly with literally millions of different configurations.
Ok, I'll bite.
Here is Microsoft's lists of improvements. Which of these do you think makes Windows 10 worth the trouble?
Customizable Start experience. don't care. I like the start button just fine.
Refreshed icons and graphics don't care. Win 7 looks fine for me
Integration with Microsoft's digital assistant - Cortana, can be used for finding and retrieving information on the Internet and your PC, such as files. You can also use it to control applications such as the Music Player and prepare an email message or track a package. don't care. I don't need to search for files - I know where they are already. If I'm looking online that's what Google is for. Don't play music on the computer. Email - that's what Outlook or similar is for. Track a package - that's what the company's website is for.
Task View for managing applications using multiple desktops. what? I only have 1 screen, don't need more than one desktop.
Modern apps can now be windowed and behave just like desktop apps. they clearly have no idea how I use my computer. Chrome, word,
excel, outlook.
Notification Center for centralized management of notifications and quick access to PC settings. maybe helpful, but I can find what I need in Win 7 so not really necessary.
Universal applications that work not only on your Windows 10 PC, but also your mobile phone running Windows 10 and also XBOX One. my phone is android and I don't have a gaming console.
XBOX App for Streaming of live games to a PC or Tablet don't have, don't want
Touch optimized Office applications (Word, Excel, Outlook, OneNote and PowerPoint). Providing the power of Office on devices with touch support. Users can edit, prepare documents, spreadsheets and presentations with full document fidelity regardless of device. don't have a touch screen,
and I prefer not to get finger prints all over my monitor anyway.
Continuum Mode - if you own a 2 in 1 form factor that works both as a laptop and tablet, you can easily let Windows 10 decide the best environment for you. Once detached into Tablet mode for instance, you can work in a more touch optimized user interface. Users will also be able to remotely use Windows 10 Mobile apps on their Windows PCs. don't have that hardware
Microsoft Edge - Windows 10 will include a next generation web browser called Edge that support advances in Windows 10 such as Cortana for finding information on the web, Annotation, PDF support, superior reading experience. will probably continue to use Chrome
Music and playlist integration in OneDrive. itunes holds my music, on my harddrive. Not putting it into the cloud
Unified messaging using Skype Integration hell no.
Windows Hello and Passport for personalized authentication without the use of passwords. I don't have a password on my home computer anyway
Device Guard for protecting devices against malicious applications. so, antivirus/malware?
Support for media formats such as FLAC and MKV no idea what those are. clearly haven't run into them
For me, Win 10 isn't necessary. I'm perfectly happy with Win 7. Since support will end in 2020, we'll see if the laptop survives until then. I've already lost a usb port, replaced the battery (more precisely, dad replaced the battery. I didn't care), and the cd/dvd drive has a few little issues. When 2020 comes around, I'll reevaluate then.
edit: typo
I care about absolutely none of those "features." In fact many of them I've turned off or not used at all on my own PCs (Cortana, Edge, OneDrive, Skype, Windows Store, etc.). They're really bragging about MKV and FLAC formats being supported in media player? Welcome to 2006, Microsoft.
No, what I care about are the more generic less-obvious boring modernization/optimization that has occurred:
They back-pedaled some of the everything's-a-tablet-now-fuck-you nonsense from Win8. I've used 8 for less than an hour total, but it was pretty infuriating.
Forced updates aren't super elegant, but I've had fewer issues with updates overall than I did on 7.
Better touch screen support is fine if not super important; lots of laptops are touch now - GF's is, and I was able to limp along on it when the touchpad was acting up.
Much better support for multiple monitors/weird resolutions/higher resolutions. 4K displays actually look reasonable on Win10. They look pretty stupid/inconsistent on 7.
Way better than 7 at automatically finding drivers for hardware. This has saved me hours.
MS finally has acknowledged that doing a Windows reinstall is a fact of life as a Windows user, and has made it much simpler and built-in as an option ("Reset this PC"). Granted, I haven't used this yet, but it's a wonderful idea.
Installing Windows itself is hilariously fast compared to 7 (and 7 was much faster than XP in this regard). I think the last time I did it, it took about 15 minutes.
Adding network printers and whatnot is simpler/faster than in 7.
Little things like Task Manager and Windows Explorer have much more information and are faster/easier to use. Search is also improved.
Boot and wake-from-idle times seem faster than 7.
None of this is the flashy stuff you notice or that MS flaunts, but they're the things I miss whenever I step back into Win7-land.