Re: Complacency and nuclear-powered ice picks
it seems that changing things for the sake of changing them has been an integral part of Microsoft's business plan
Correct - that's been part of their plan for many years, making things a moving target and routinely breaking any competitor's products (along with their own from time to time).
if you let Microsoft manage your computer, they will take care of you as best they can, but your computer then belongs to them
I'm not so sure of "as best they can", but essentially correct. It's another facet of the first bit - making it ever harder to use anything ut a fully MS ecosystem. MS stuff (taking care with my words here) "isn't always the best" for any particular task - but they've been masters of applying lipstick and making it all sort of work together in a way that makes it really hard for any competitors to get a foothold.
There was a danger point for them a few years back when governments and other public bodies were starting to realise the risk and started putting "open standard" as a clause into procurement contracts. As an idea it worked, if your documents are in an open standard format then you can read them with someone else's software. Naturally MS recognised the danger of this, and spent a considerable amount of money buying national standards body votes to pass its "called open, called standard, but is neither open nor a standard" standard so they could tick the boxes.