> I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows.

Me too. I liked opinionated software when my opinions aligned with Apple's. But I found i hated it when they didn't. Around mavericks or Sierra or so I started getting more and more annoyed with all the things being changed for the worse (in my opinion). Then during the pandemic I had plenty of free time to dig deep into my computing future and I moved to KDE. Heavily customised just the way I love it. It's a breath of fresh air not having someone else make choices on how I should use my computer. Haven't looked back since.

I had already left iOS because it's so locked down and the hardware too expensive for the specs. That already broke a ton of the "just works" of course.