Microsoft did that already years ago. Win32 hasn't been their recommended API for a very long time. They have WinRT now, which is in many ways a much nicer API

Microsoft did that already years ago. Win32 hasn't been their recommended API for a very long time. They have WinRT now, which is in many ways a much nicer API except that nobody cares, it's too late already, hardly anyone writes Windows specific apps anymore and when they do it's mostly "legacy" .NET WPF stuff. So, Windows isn't being held back by Win32 specifically. What's killing them is the combination of: - General inability to implement new tech that can be used to pay down old tech debt (not specific to any particular API). This is largely due to ... - A barely competent team that clearly checked out mentally years ago and doesn't care. Supposedly they lost so many people to Google and Azure that Windows hardly has any experienced seniors anymore, and if you try to use anything they did in the last 10 years then really, it shows. Worse the Windows team never shook its C++ centric culture despite badly needing the productivity and hirability boost that comes from modern GCd languages. - Extremely poor team coherence, prioritization of projects etc. Why are they re-designing the task bar when basic initiatives flail around, unadopted for lack of bug fixes or quality docs? None of those problems would be fixed by MS doing a new OS project because they are primarily management problems, not technical problems.