I wouldn't say it's a patronizing answer - there are people that don't think to clean up their systems periodically. It addressed the underlying issue (in most cases) - the possibility of running out of space. I have 9 GB free on my 32 GB Surface RT, so
I have to be as careful about what I install as anyone. But I also audit my programs frequently, and have everything I can redirected to the SD card - Documents, Downloads, Videos, Onedrive.
It is a temporary solution, I agree, but since MS seems most concerned with making sure systems are stable I think it's probably the best one. Since they deliberately "broke" the hack, I doubt they plan on reactivating it. I never used the hack, specifically
because it was unsupported and not recommended.
As for why they did it, I imagine there would be risks involved with having apps saved on removable storage, even if the user doesn't treat it as such. But I don't see anything wrong in letting savvy users choose to take on that risk, either.
I certainly don't treat my SD card as removable - the only time I removed it was when I upgraded it. But I have had it pop out when I held my Surface "wrong" (picking it up & closing the kickstand) - the card slot on the Surface seems to be right where my
hands want to go naturally. I wonder how the system would have handed it if the app I'd been running had been on the card? Has anyone who used the hack in 8.0 encountered that situation? Had the card unmount/pop out while running an app installed on it? I'm
genuinely curious about how well 8.0 recovered from that.
Please note, my thoughts about why MS doesn't allow this are entirely speculation - I don't have any kind of insider knowledge. It's just an educated guess.
Other options for freeing space include making a recovery USB drive and deleting the recovery partition - I just did that on my Surface. Next I might try letting the Surface compress the C drive. I'm holding off because I'm worried about whether there's
a performance hit.
There's no harm in asking MS to make putting apps on the SD card officially supported (instead of the unsupported hack from 8.0) but we also have to acknowledge that it may not happen. It makes sense to also find other ways to save and reclaim space while
asking for change.