@matigo Haha, soliciting active feedback from users… that's something that Apple never does, at least not that I've seen. Perhaps it aggregates feedback received via its websites, Apple Support channels and from its media events, but in the end, it's the product managers and the Big Man on top who makes the decisions as to what to leave and what to cut.
That's why there are third-party developers, who are able to more flexibly serve the needs of people who want a more customized experience. "There's an app for that." đŸ˜†
Oh, and about the Windows Start menu sending requests to Bing, you probably know that this can be disabled via a registry setting. (I just did this—very easy.) I know, sending user queries in the Start menu straightaway to Bing is not something that Microsoft should even be doing in the first place, but at least there are workarounds to disable their poor behavior.