Windows as a software package would have never been affordable to individuals or local-level orgs in countries like India and Bangladesh (especially in the 2000’s) that are now powerhouses of IT. Same for many SE Asian, Eastern European, African and LatinoAmerican countries as well.
Had the OS been too difficult to pirate, educators and local institutions in these countries would have certainly shifted to Linux and the like. The fact that Windows could be pirated easily is the main factor that led to its ubiquity and allowed it to become a household name. Its rapid popularity in the '00s and early ‘10s cemented its status as the PC operating system. It is probably the same for Microsoft Office as well (it is still a part of many schools’ standard curricula).
The fact that Windows still remains pirateable to this day is perhaps intentional on Microsoft’s part.
Eh. Adobe puts more effort into making it harder or tedious.
With the introduction of Creative Cloud, the notorious “amtlib.dll” that houses Adobe licensing, was bundled into the respective applications binary (exe). It didn’t stop pirates. In 24 hours they found the licensing mechanism and patched it.
You could create a CC account, install the desktop manager, install any app(s) you wanted, then crack them. When an update arrived, you could simply update the app(s) and apply the crack again.
Occasionally the licensing mechanism would update and an updated crack would be needed. As usual, pirates had this worked out the day of or a day later.
Adobe would later patch the desktop manager and break functionality to update software if it wasn’t genuine. People could still get the latest versions by uninstalling and reinstalling through the desktop manager. Since it would retain user settings by default.
Later, a mechanism was built into each application that would throw a warning message that the application isn’t genuine. For example, Photoshop would soft lock and the genuine check would display with the only option to close. This too was eventually patched out by pirates.
The latest attempt from Adobe now forces users to input and have a credit or debit card saved before activating a trial. This removed the ability for users to easily install software anonymously.
They already have the monopoly so it’s fine for them to cash in now
They should be careful. Plenty of alternatives cropping up. No, they’re not as technically impressive, but anyone with some basic Photoshop knowledge can do the same things on GIMP, paint.net, photopea, etc. Might just take a few extra steps.
All going to be less relevant soon with AI art though. If we are in the rotary phone stage of AI, wait until we get to the iPhone stage.