I use kde nowadays and the amount of customization is awesome.
I am using chrome OS theme with tela icon pack and a cool ass animated mouse pack. And its frankly awesome.
I feel like Apple is stagnating.
A recent example was some web view showing a change log that respected the font color settings but not the background, resulting in white-on-white text with my dark UI.
I'm probably far more willing to spend time on such issues. But I never got to a place where I felt I was "done". In that sense, Linux only demonstrates the difficulty of UI choices, and how it may not be possible to leave it to users. Hell, it's not even possible, apparently, to leave to application developers, judging by the state of the non-customized Linux desktop. Design may be a creative endeavour that requires a competent dictator, and cannot be done in the bazaar-model of OSS.
(That, of course, is on top of the rather large number of flaws of any given Linux UI. Seriously: after reading much praise and endless criticism of MacOS here on HN, I gave (K)Ubuntu another shot. And the only possible conclusion is that Apple and Linux are measured on widely different scales.)
+1
They are simply designed for different end users - and that is fine. I used macOS for ~5 years before getting fed up with the limited window management - but I understand why it is that way - most people don't care. So people who do, can just use KDE et al, peace.
The main reason I love iOS and macOS is the consistency in the interface because majority of apps follows the same HIG provided by Apple.
Windows is a mess between various interfaces from various eras of Windows and I dislike it. I don't want to figure things out, the app should just work consistently for me. Even today, various distros are struggling to make sure various GTK/QT/etc apps are themed the same way when you change their theme settings (they're getting better with client side decorations).
I used to play with themes and hacks on Windows, I almost always go back to default because in the long run, it just got boring after a few months and it was annoying. I want consistency and stability more than customization. Even on Pop!_OS I use on my Thinkpad; I've tried various themes and WDM, I just gave up and left it at default, it's fine. The only tweak I need is font scaling to make HiDPI work better.
This would be a terrible idea.
People complain (in the comments on this very page) that Apple’s professional designers do a terrible job. You think my uncle is going to do better?
Yes he will, because he has to only care about what he needs, and he is the best judge of that.
The jaded old fart SW dev in me tells you:
No, he most certainly isn't.
Sure as hell Apple will not allow too much customization, but they could do the designs themselves and give users a bit more choice.
Beyond that, you quickly get to a point where whole layouts would have to change. Doing so, across three to five platforms, would be a major undertaking for Apple itself. And app developers would never be able to consistently support multiple design paradigms, leading to a fractured experience.