The near-unanimous criticism is indeed something new, but I seem to remember Apple getting some flack every time they ship anything. It's usually "This new OS X 10.x is just catering to the unwashed masses. OS X 10.x-2 was a beautiful system for professionals".

Part of the problem may be our myopic view of the past, from where it seems as if Apple revolutionised computing on something like a yearly basis. A system that "just works" seems to bore today's "professionals" – even though I'd argue that SSDs and retina displays were two of the last decades' largest improvements in performance and ergonomics, respectively.