> And... it's fine? Am I only using the happy path? Or are people just particularly confident about complaining about Tahoe after seeing everyone else do it.

That's like asking whether Jackson Pollock or Thomas Kinkade is the better artist. There is no objective measure for it. Some people will have a strong preference, others won't have a preference at all. The designers who made the changes in Tahoe clearly thought the changes are improvements. A lot of macOS users disagree, but some macOS users don't have a preference.