Microsoft has a serious and ongoing PR crisis, and not just for historical reasons (90s antitrust, etc).
There are undoubtedly many highly intelligent, well-meaning people working there, but the ongoing occurrence of highly-publicized customer screwage - such as the aggressive telemetry in W10 - and the ongoing security negligence (e.g. in failing to properly audit & fully close SMB RCEs) seems to totally undermine any goodwill created by specific products or teams within the company.
As a result the press cuts them little to no slack, and they do get hammered for things that AAPL/GOOG/FB/... could probably quietly get away with.
At some point, it stops being isolated incidents and starts being a pattern of decision-making. IMO, Microsoft has a crisis in the way that Windows is managed, and part of that is that the C-Level level of the company either no longer cares about Windows, or actually supports the decisions that are made. You may have thought that at some point the reputational damage caused by the way that telemetry was handled, or the fall-out from the unethical Windows 10 upgrade process, would have triggered action by the CEO. In both cases, nothing.
There are undoubtedly many highly intelligent, well-meaning people working there, but the ongoing occurrence of highly-publicized customer screwage - such as the aggressive telemetry in W10 - and the ongoing security negligence (e.g. in failing to properly audit & fully close SMB RCEs) seems to totally undermine any goodwill created by specific products or teams within the company.
As a result the press cuts them little to no slack, and they do get hammered for things that AAPL/GOOG/FB/... could probably quietly get away with.