You and I (but certainly many dissidents!) empathise on that. Since I first started out with Windows 10, so many months ago, I have never looked back. I must say though, in sympathy for many, I have never had a major problem, nor, for that matter, have any of the local colleagues and friends who I have helped.
After the first couple of months, I wiped all of my known family 7/8 installations and reinstalled Windows 10.
Another point to make, I guess, is that in the vast majority of the instances, it has always been a clean install. As a hobby, I did not mind having to reinstall needed software for others.
But the update issue , whilst , again, I have had no problems, has annoyed me to the extent that I have gone into writing and, most definitely, annoyed certain areas of the great Microsoft establishment.
I will not go to the extent of hacking my OS, in order to try and stop the automatic updates. I feel it is a problem which MS should address.
Now that W10 has been out for over a year, that may help. However, the AU issue is particularly annoying and Microsoft will need to fix that soon.
There are still many folks hesitant to upgrade to W10 (especially now that they have to pay for it), and if they buy a brand new machine or tablet with W10 pre-loaded, they are going to have fits trying to get the AU installed in their devices as it's not an overlay-type update at the moment, but acts like a complete OS upgrade, so it looks like you have to clean install a new OS and it might as well be Win11.
I personally am a big fan of W10 and have 5-W10 machines running and building more for Clients all the time. 
