I worked on an app team, PowerPoint. After Balmer left, policies changed such that any new office app features had to ship on both windows and Mac at the same time. (Or least try to)
So I think that definitely helped and allowed people to request macs as thier laptops. For azure, I'm not sure..
Yup they do, I worked there. Had 2 macs and an iPhone for development. Many employees use Mac laptops over surfaces as well
I figured out you can split your corrupt gold stacks and one split of it usually uncorrupts. So now I just do that whenever I end up with corrupted gold. (For me it always happens when using the barter screen)
Nah they had AAA titles from day one like starfield, total war Warhammer 3, wasteland 3, ect. Those make it worth it.
As publishers roll out thier own crap the quality will drop but at the moment I've saved quite a bit of money keeping game pass.