> There have been no objective improvements since Windows 7 that I can think of

I think this is pretty rude to the many people who have contributed to Windows in the years gone by. I won't argue that there hasn't been some crappy things added or on the advantages/disadvantages of later Windows versions but there have been plenty of things added since Windows 7. Some I can think off just off the top of my head

* Credential Guard - protection of secrets in the lsass process even from kernel access

* gMSA support - Windows 7 could only use standalone MSA accounts which weren't as useful

* Windows LAPS - now supports encryption and is builtin to the OS

* Schannel improvements - newer cipher suites and TLS protocols (cipher suites in Win 7 are right at the edge of what people might support these days)

* SMB 3 - encryption, compression, better integrity/mitm/downgrade protection over SMB 2

* WSL

* Windows Sandbox

* Windows Terminal - including ConPTY support in the underlying APIs

There's plenty more out there but these are pretty important features for me to have on Windows. Granted some only make sense in a more corporate/domain environment but not all of them.