I tried the adjustment to the Apple way from 2010 to 2018. By the end of it I realized that "tinkering" has an equivalent in the Apple world and it is called "upgrading." These two terms are almost synonymous in the pain which they will cause. By the end of my journey I had a firm "one major version upgrade per iOS device" rule and a desktop OS upgrade experience that was driving me crazy, because random CAD app wouldn't support the new OS, but another app wouldn't support the mainstream-old OS anymore.

I won't say that tinkering is totally productive, but 1) personally my tinkering on Linux has led to technology development and I'm the type of guy who benefits from that anyway, and 2) I believe the pain you leave behind in lost productivity is at least offset by 25% instant upgrade-related stress for each Apple device in your household or sphere of personal work activity.

Even just constrained to hardware, the horror stories about new Apple devices alone made me doubt my HW upgrade plans. By itself that was enough to make me wonder if I was about to throw away thousands.

Unsurprisingly I felt like there were things Apple could do to make this all better, but like you said, they cannot be made to do what you like :-)