The writer addresses hardware only, not discussing the number of software nuisances that have been added. Using Mavericks on an ADSL connection was next to impossible because it insisted on downloading 300MB of trivia right out of the box - an update for some plaything like Garageband. Finally tamed the "phone home" tendencies with Little Snitch.

From my POV the apotheosis of OSX was 10.6.8, so my daily driver on my 2013 retina MBP (Mojave) is... SLS 10.6.8, virtualized in Fusion. When this machine dies, that's it, no more Apple anything.