Oh the actual UX is horrible, and ironically I confirm what your colleague said that it used to be better than now. It has suffered from the enshittification process the same as everything else these days in our terminal stages of capitalism. Imagine if there was actually competition! Instead, Microsoft went around purchasing any competing product, and rather than absorb the new features simply remove it from the market - bc one implementation of the evolutionary strategy of survival of the fittest is to be better than others, but a far cheaper move is to simply kill off everything else so that you are all that's left. In the authoritarian sense that "you'll take what we offer and like it", it works, bc people are unwilling or unable to put in the time & effort to do better, with FOSS.

Ironically for an unbloated editor for quick stuff, I use gVim, if I am on my own machine.:-) Wordpad would be good if you have to be on a generic Windows machine though - I think it can even do bulleted lists?

Furthermore, on a Mac the implementation of MSO is even less optimal, especially irt battery. So it's not even like I "like" it, it just seems the least horrible option available:-(.