My experience with wxWidgets based apps is that they tend to not handle DPI scaling well. Audacity is a good example, IIRC that's one of the reasons they're moving to Qt.
Having spent a few years trying to write Windows utility software, it is really exhausting to be in an antagonistic relationship with Microsoft and have their updates constantly break your work.
The article mentions ExplorerPatcher -- the changelog [1] of that project is informative. Every release involves fixing a bunch of things that Microsoft broke, intentionally or not. Some of this is understandable given how it (necessarily) messes with low level OS components, but there is still zero transparency and you just need to roll with whatever changes. I can't imagine doing that kind of work anymore.
This seems to be about injecting your own code into a running process and then modifying its behavior. The kinds of things that would break from build to build are VERY DIFFERENT from what typical applications would face.
A lot of basic tweaks to windows behavior require those types of unstable hacks. The point is that developers or users who want to modify their system are forced into sketchy software.
Sounds like the iOS model: your app only exists as long as you are alive and able to pay $99/year. This mentality is a nightmare for software preservation.
I paid for "Square Home" a couple years ago and I'm very happy with it. It's highly customizable. The Windows Phone style layout probably isn't for everyone but it works well for me.
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