Using macOS for ~5 months now after decades of Windows and Linux and it's... subpar. Which is surprising since it has so many devoted evangelists. I'd honestly rather use Gnome than macOS on the desktop.
Don't even get me started on Docker and how it works on it.
That seems to have been lost. New and often unwanted features just add to the complexity. A lot of first party applications seem subpar. And iCloud often seems more like a nuisance than a feature.
I still like Apple hardware but I’m looking forward to trying Asahi Linux soon.
MacOS is very clear about what it will and won't do. So long as you subscribe to the One Apple Way(tm) and adhere to what MacOS will do, you're golden; and a common man's use case almost never goes beyond what MacOS will do.
Combine that with a consistent design language and I, sincerely, would recommend a Macbook Air of some description to most people. MacOS Just Works(tm).
Windows and Linux are for the tinkerers, for the masses MacOS is the best option out there.
To this day, if you want, you can run Finder with no chrome, as a strictly spatial file navigator. There is a vibrant, reactive, and profitable market for third-party software to change the capabilities of the OS. Windows has a market too, but it is far from what the mac community manages to make. macOS is still a tinkerer's dream to a greater extent than Windows.
In my case, as a computer user of 27 years who’s been writing code in some capacity for around 20 years, macOS is preferable because its stock config is the closest to how I want things to work. It takes very little config prodding to get to my productive “happy place”.
With Linux on the other hand, reaching that same “happy place” feels like a Sisyphean task… no matter how lunch time I spend on tinkering it still isn’t “right” and that further detracts from productivity because it’s distracting. I don’t think I could make Linux my primary OS without developing my own DE, which rather than Sisyphean is Herculean.
Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly fine and probably works great for most people. But there's been a plethora of tiny issues and problems that make it juuust annoying enough to use for me that I'd rather not.
Window management is one example. Needing a third party program running to fix scrolling with a mouse is obnoxious. Had an update that failed because it couldn't close a program, I clicked the cancel option on the dialog, and when I later closed that application then the machine restarted and applied the update. I haven't had even Windows force an update on me like that in years. The VPN client will store a password, then not use it (although maybe that's related to the host?). There have been other issues for me, those are just the ones I remember.
It's a shame too, I love the hardware of the MacBook: screen, speakers, track pad, even the keyboard are all great. If this was a personal device I'd probably be getting into Asahi despite its very much in development state (and yes I know a lot of what I like about the hardware has underlying software making it great which doesn't translate to Asahi right now, but I'm confident it'll get there one day).
Return will select the default whether it is selected or not
Escape will select cancel whether selected or not
That one view where icons don't snap to any grid but move like pixels in a raster editor... I am baffled as to why did it ever got made, and how is it staying in every new version.