I've always been a fan of Microsoft. From when I was a young kid playing with Windows 95, to today, as a 30-year-old reviewing the best laptops, messing with Windows 11 Insider builds, and reporting on all the latest Microsoft news and rumors, the firm is pretty close to my heart. Heck, I even go out there and spend my hard-earned money on Microsoft products and services, like Surface devices, my Xbox Series X, and even Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

As much as I love the company, though, there are some moments when Microsoft has driven me up the wall. With the recent controversy and fans' anger around point devaluing in the Microsoft Rewards program, I felt the need to go back and talk about some similar moments. There were definitely times when I was so mad that I wanted to chuck my Microsoft stuff out of the window and give up faith in my favorite tech giant.

4 Degrading Microsoft Rewards

The points are worth less now

As I mentioned, I'm a Microsoft fan, so I use Microsoft products. I subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and play Game Pass titles on my Xbox. I use Bing as my search engine in place of Google. I even use Microsoft Edge instead of Google Chrome whenever possible. One thing that all those things have in common? I earn rewards for using those services through the Microsoft Rewards program, which I can eventually cash in for things like Amazon or Microsoft gift cards.

On Bing, for example, I get up to 150 points for each of my daily searches. For using Microsoft Edge, I used to get a 20-point daily Microsoft Rewards bonus. Even searching Bing on a mobile phone gets 100 points in total. And on Xbox? I used to get 50 points for completing an Xbox achievement and bonus quests along the way. However, Microsoft has recently cut back on these point systems. It eliminated the Microsoft Edge bonus and has added a "cooldown" period for earnings points for searches on Bing. It also has devalued the daily bonus quests on the Microsoft Rewards dashboards to just two points.

Microsoft doesn't seem to value giving out points to its fans for using its products anymore. I've stored up close to 500,000 points (which is nearly $500) from years of work, all from using the program the legitimate way.

Of course, I don't just want this to sound like a rant. Microsoft Rewards is run by Microsoft, and they have a right to make changes. It's been known for a while now that people abuse the program by writing scripts to gain points unfairly, so these changes protect the program itself.

Also, the experience always evolves, too, with new features (like the new Bing prediction game which can reward 15 reward points). This is one of the company's reasons behind the change, as the company explained in a statement that "the Microsoft Rewards program has regularly evolved to reflect our growth and expansion, and "we eagerly monitor feedback to ensure satisfaction."

But these changes are somewhat unfair to those who use the rewards program fairly. I put a lot of time and effort into earning my points, and to see them devalued like this makes me just want to give up. It now takes a lot more effort than before. And I'm not alone.

3 Windows 11 and the unsupported CPU and TPM controversy

Leaving Windows 10 users in the dust

Windows 11 is a great operating system with a lot of cool features, but when it was first released, I was a little mad with Microsoft. You probably remember it too, but a lot of PCs that run Windows 10 were unable to run the new operating system. This is even though the hardware is just fine, and capable of web browsing, gaming, and other tasks without any issues.

The reason? Microsoft decided to change the minimum specs needed to run Windows 11. You needed an eighth generation or newer Intel CPU, or AMD Zen 2 or newer CPU, and that CPU needed to have a TPM 2.0 chip. All of this was in the name of security and stability.

I get that this is a way to ensure Windows 11 runs smoothly on all hardware, but there were ways around this (and there still are), and many people are still able to run Windows 11 just fine on older hardware without issues. That's why seeing such a change made me angry. Now, this change with Windows 11 has left many Windows 10 PCs in the dust with unsupported hardware in 2025. The company even recognizes this now, too, and it will be selling extended security updates for Windows 10 users unable to move to Windows 11 or buy new hardware.

2 Pushing "ads" in all of its products

Getting too aggressive

This third issue is something that you also might have noticed. Microsoft does seem to be getting too aggressive with the way it pushes its products on users. Even though I'm a happy Windows user, I'm still subject to the company's tactics. There are always pre-pinned partner apps on the Start Menu on Windows. The company is pushing Copilot (which I don't even use so much) on all of its products like Swiftkey, Edge, and even Windows, and there are way too many ads for things like Peacock and other prompted games on the Xbox dashboard.

Even Microsoft Edge is feeling bloated these days with shopping features, and even Copilot. And let me not forget what happens when you try to Install Chrome through Edge. Bing will tell you that you don't need a new web browser, and Microsoft even injects a popup in Edge on the Chrome download page about how Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome.

I miss the days when Microsoft stuck to the basics. Now it's too busy forcing the discoverability of its products. Remember Windows XP or Windows 7? When all you had was a clean Start Menu, where you could just find and navigate to your apps without pre-pinned nonsense?

But to be fair, these are features that Microsoft wants you to use, and we are in a time when discoverability is critical for both the user and app developers. After all, Copilot is pretty useful for novice Windows users, since it can assist in tasks related to Windows settings. It even can go beyond that and help summarize documents, too. And it's not something Microsoft is new to doing, or other companies, either. Microsoft has had "ads" in Windows 10, too, mainly on the Start Menu with pre-pinned apps. Apple will show you suggestions to try apps like Apple TV, or even Apple Arcade on your iPhone. Even Amazon and Google have "ads" for shows on Google TV and Fire TV. It might be annoying, but it is a way for you to discover and find

1 All the times it has killed my favorite products

Zune, Windows Phone, and more

Finally, I landed on all the times Microsoft killed my favorite products. More than once, Microsoft has decided to take the ax to something I've used one way or another. There's a whole website dedicated to the things Microsoft has killed off, but there are a few that I still hold dear to my heart that made me emotional when the company decided to let them go.

At the top is Zune, which was different from the iPod at the time when it first launched. It was unique in its way, like the sleek metro-based user interface, and the way it was just so portable, tiny, and could fit in my hand. I owned a Zune, as my parents got me one instead of an iPod at the time (since it was more affordable) and I remember spending hours ripping music off CDs and putting it on my Zune, and even playing those songs through the Zune app on Windows.

It's a shame Zune never lived past 2012. It wasn't just a copy of the iPod, it did things in its cool way, but Zune never took off as much to remain popular. Zune sales were low. It never made sense for Microsoft to sell something that wasn't popular, as, in 2008, Zune only sold 2 million units, against the iPod's 10.6 million. Maybe Microsoft could have made Zune more affordable than the iPod to help it sell more and more sustainable?

Zune is one thing, but I can't forget Windows Phone, either. This can be a piece of its own, but Windows Phone was a different breed of smartphone for many reasons. Again, similar to Zune, it's the user interface, the hardware itself, cool features like Continuum, and even the way Microsoft pushed Windows 10 Mobile builds (based on the same code as desktop Windows 10) each week to the phone.

We all know why it died, and why Android and iOS rule supreme over it, with Windows Phone only holding a 3% share of the market back in 2013, but it's still something that I always feel upset Microsoft gave up on. What if Windows Phone eventually lived on with Project Astoria, which was a way to port Android apps over to the platform? The world may never know.

But what I do know is that Zune and Windows Phone aren't the only products Microsoft has killed off. Surface Duo, Surface Neo, Windows 10X, the list can go on and on. Microsoft always comes up with these revolutionary products, and then never commits to them!

Have you ever been mad at a company before?

These are four times that Microsoft has made me nuts, but I'm sure you can think of some moments of your own. Maybe it's something like Windows 10X never seeing the light of day. Or maybe it's related to an app Microsoft killed. Or maybe, in general, you've had a moment where you've just "had it" with a company. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'm not alone in the way I feel!