OK. A very good response indeed, and I can't really counter any of it.

Well, I mean, I can -- e.g. I loved classic MacOS. But that's a personal judgement call.

I think I've seen Homer's Car in meme format, now you come to mention it.

Classic Mac OS has a certain charm to it.

As a programmer, I can point out all the many, many flaws with its technical architecture. Or how Apple's managerial incompetence let Microsoft leapfrog them technologically. Or even how Microsoft eventually figured out how to give Windows its own visual identity[0].

But at the end of the day, people were buying Macs despite the company making them. Apple had built an OS that made everything else look like a copycat, by worrying about the little details that few else cared about. It's the only reason Apple survived where literally every other non-Wintel PC company died. Atari STs and Amigas might have been fondly remembered, but their fanbases all jumped ship for PC the moment DooM came out, and the companies in question all got sold off for peanuts.

[0] My personal opinion regarding Windows visual design:

- Windows 1.x-3.x (and also OS/2 1.x): Really clunky and piss-poor attempt at cloning the Mac. It has the "programmer art" feel all over it. 3.x is slightly better in that they actually figured out how to pick a good default color scheme, but it still doesn't even have a proper desktop, instead using the root window as minimized window storage.

- Windows 9x/NT/2000: Not only does Windows finally get a real desktop, but it also gets a unique visual design, and a good one. Hell, they actually leapfrogged Apple on this one; as Mac OS 8 would take a few more years to ship its Platinum appearance.

- Windows XP: Cheap. Toylike. Microsoft saw OSX's Aqua and realized they needed something for Whistler, but they didn't seem to know what, and this is what we got. Media Center Edition would ship a slightly less toylike Windows visual theme.

- Windows Vista / 7: The absolute pinnacle of Microsoft's visual design chops. Aero is the thing that Liquid Glass wishes it could be. The glass effects were a perfect way to show off the power of GPU compositing, and Microsoft managed to do it without sacrificing readability or usability.

- Windows 8/10/11: Flatslop.