As a full-time Apple user for the last 7 years or so (not counting my //e days as a kid), I completely agree with this sentiment.

When you have a captive audience and no competition, it is easy to become complacent.

If Linux had a compelling desktop UI alternative and a compelling seamless device integration, I'd be very happy to switch.

I realize there is a lot of subjectivity to what is pretty, but Apple has opened the door for competitors to come out with a more self-consistent UX and address the shortcomings that Apple has introduced in their UX. Such as reduced discoverability, the loss of at-a-glance comprehension.

Off topic, but have you tried Gnome 3? I personally can't stand it, but a lot of my friends who use macOS love it, to the point of saying it's on par with the macOS desktop environment.

I'll give it a whirl. Last desktop I used was whatever Ubuntu has... Unity I think or something like that.

A lot of glitz, but also very glitchy. I'd be happy with plain, consistent, discoverable, comprehisble. The animation eye candy is nice, but it's low on my priority list.

Fedora or Ubuntu running Gnome 3 with Dash to Dock extension are the perfect alternatives to macOS.

Not ones that blatantly copy and put backdoors in for their governments (not only Xiaomi but also MSFT, Google, etc)...

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/27486/security/xiaomi-ha...

https://thehackernews.com/2016/07/hack-Xiaomi-phone.html