Mike writes: It's the integrations (ie ecosystem)

I just listened to the episode that was comparing Gnome desktop to MacOS. As someone that has been using Linux since 1995 (server side) and Desktop (on and off) since 1997, I have to say that MacOS is "fine".

I use a web browser (Vivaldi), iTerm (with tmux, and all my terminal tools), and VS Code all day. With Moom for moving windows around via keyboard shortcuts it works just fine. I never find it to be in my way or slow (m1 with 64gb of ram).

Where it shines, and the reason I came back to it when the M1 was released, is the integrations with my phone, watch, home, etc.

On top of that is the integration with my family's devices. "Find My" is amazing for keeping track of my kids as they are old enough to wander around the neighborhood on their own.

The integration of Messages, and Photos, and Facetime, and being able to answer my phone from my laptop and transition the call to a facetime call, and  managing family screen time / subscriptions from a central location, and home automations is amazing.

That level of integration in the eco-system isn't available anywhere else, and now that I'm a dad in my mid 40s, i don't have the time to tinker like i used to. With minor exceptions (usually Siri not understanding an intercom command correctly, to one of the home pod minis that we have in every room of the house) it has "just worked".

On top of that, little things like being able to view and rotate 3d printer files in open dialog boxes and the finder are just nice touches that i wasn't able to get working on Linux.

And running Fedora in Parallels is faster on the M1 than it was on my 2017 Dell XPS 13. So, even when I do want a linux desktop, and run it virtually, it still feels like an upgrade ... so I don't feel like i'm missing anything, and maybe i'm in the minority, but i'm not seeing any of the pain that you and others have mentioned. I basically live in iTerm and VS Code, and in my normal, 90% use case, workflow i notice very little difference between MacOS and Linux.

Where I do notice is that other 10% where all the integrations come into play, and that's where it is nicer.

(unless there is an update that needs to update command line tools. then yes. 30 minutes of pain ;-) )