More annoying is when you use something like SoundSource (a paid app which adds per-app volume control and input/output redirection to macOS... a feature that by all rights should be built in in any reasonable OS) you get a permanent purple dot indicating a third party tool is intercepting audio.

Again, I get it, but as a power user this kind of stuff is just infuriating.

It's also annoying that macOS doesn't already have at least basic per-app volume mixing.

So much pain in macOS is in areas like this, trying to hack basic features back into the anemic OS.

Apple's "OS" updates typically focus on end-user applications that I don't use and never intend to. Meanwhile the core of the OS, and even the desktop environment, feels stagnant compared to many Linux distros.