Q. Is this really as harmful as you think?
A. Go to your parents house, your grandparents house etc and look at their Windows PC, look at the installed software in the past year, and try to use the device. Run some antivirus scans. There’s no way this implementation doesn’t end in tears — there’s a reason there’s a trillion dollar security industry, and that most problems revolve around malware and endpoints.
Eh? Nothing significant has changed about the windows file system in over a decade, at least not from a user standpoint.
Most people don’t need to muck about in ProgramData, Program Files vs Program Files (x86) is pretty minimal, though admittedly you may need to check both if you’re unsure which the app you’re using is. I suppose %appdata% has changed, and one could argue it was significant, but in all honesty the concept of local vs remote should get you where you’re going, and worst case you check both.
But the base directory structure has been pretty static for a long while now.
