The problem is that "to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run" changes when they want it to run something new. They don't care about cloud backup for their data? One hard drive failure, and suddenly they do. And if you want to sell the same version of the OS to different people, you need the union of what everybody wants and what everybody is going to want later.
But there needs to be a way to turn something off that you don't want, and to not get nagged about it repeatedly thereafter. But for that to work, there has to be a clear, easily findable way to turn it back on later.
> And if you want to sell the same version of the OS to different people, you need the union of what everybody wants and what everybody is going to want later.
The answer is: make the OS extremely modular so that the user can have configure whether he wants an absolutely minimalistic OS or something with "batteries included".
They think they know better than what the user wants. If someone who is not a power user Googles "how to turn off updates" they do not want that user to be able to find an option on how to do it, because the user won't understand the dangers. They won't read any warnings. They will follow the steps, turn it off and be part of a botnet soon. If there is ANY possible way to turn it off, someone will make a video and the people who should not find it will find it.
What if you are ACTUALLY someone who knows what they are doing and need to run a perf test over a multiple day period and need it running and uninterrupted? You can't. You are not a part of their target customer base, and at this point their actions have made it clear that they want such users to leave.
And can change their mind later. And it's clear how to change their mind later, and easy to do it.