That really just shows that everything has tradeoffs. I'd Love if Windows could run on top of the Linux kernel (as in, nvidia drivers and all the Windows compatibility while being able to do stuff like `lspci` to see my real hardware - WSL2 doesn't do full PCI device passthrough yet) but that's unlikely to happen with how much the Windows team is seemingly trying to simplify their testing infrastructure (removing CPU support and removing user choice).

Apple is not about giving you options. Either you go the Apple way or you leave the ecosystem entirely, and except for the very beginning when Steve Wozniak still had some influence, Apple has always been like that.

It has advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is obvious: few options. But the advantage is that they can make a consistent ecosystem, with sensible choices, and not dragged down by compatibility issues. It "just works". Not my thing but I totally understand those who love Apple.

The way you do recovery with Apple is via Time Machine backups, use that.

Desktop Linux is the opposite, lots of options, but perhaps because of it, it doesn't have the same polish as Apple, and even Microsoft products, or, using your words "it is annoying".