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.
I don’t think any of the UX problems you’re describing have been solved on any platform. If anything Windows is one of the better examples here, because I’ll be fucked if I can ever find a file on Android and don’t get me started with Linux.