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.