Interesting take. I'm mostly not affected by that because I use except from the OS itself nearly no Apple software to be not trapped in the Apple golden cage ever. No photos, no Apple mail, no Apple maps, no Notes etc etc. and/but I also use no iPhone. But system settings is awful, at least I can search there to not wrap my head around it.
I actually see progress in things that matter for me as software dev like virtualisation and Docker support. And with frameworks like MLX I can even run image generation tools like FLUX locally on my Mac (search for mflux). Amazing! And Apple Silicone is a screamer... still cannot believe I have the fastest single core PC on Earth in my laptop.
I only thing I use is the calendar to see my personal and work Google calendars aggregated at the same time.
So far I'm happy with macOS. If the whole graphics industry (Adobe etc) would support Linux more I would even switch away to Linux but because I'm dealing with photography, color correction and a little video too I will never switch to Linux (the graphics system quality in macOS is way too good). Windows is unfortunately no go too because of the built-in spyware and ads in the OS (like WTF).
I consider Apple Intelligence also as a sort of spyware. I don't want to activate it ever (but it gets auto activated after updates) and I don't want it to download its stuff and waste space. If people want to use it: fine, but if I personally opt out, I opt out fully Apple!
> system settings is awful, at least I can search there to not wrap my head around it
When it works. Last time I typed “keyboard” in the system settings app, the keyboard settings weren’t part of the results. Ditto “mouse” or “trackpad”. Settings search has been utterly broken on around half of the dot releases for me. If it works, it’s only temporary and then it’s back to not working on the next update (or even reboot.)
I actually see progress in things that matter for me as software dev like virtualisation and Docker support. And with frameworks like MLX I can even run image generation tools like FLUX locally on my Mac (search for mflux). Amazing! And Apple Silicone is a screamer... still cannot believe I have the fastest single core PC on Earth in my laptop.
I only thing I use is the calendar to see my personal and work Google calendars aggregated at the same time.
So far I'm happy with macOS. If the whole graphics industry (Adobe etc) would support Linux more I would even switch away to Linux but because I'm dealing with photography, color correction and a little video too I will never switch to Linux (the graphics system quality in macOS is way too good). Windows is unfortunately no go too because of the built-in spyware and ads in the OS (like WTF).
I consider Apple Intelligence also as a sort of spyware. I don't want to activate it ever (but it gets auto activated after updates) and I don't want it to download its stuff and waste space. If people want to use it: fine, but if I personally opt out, I opt out fully Apple!