I’m guessing it’s the fact that every column needs to “be something” (text, number, checkbox etc.).

While in less strict systems (Word, Apple Notes, whatever) I can just create a 10x10 table, and randomly put images in one cell and text in another etc.

not OP, but the same frustration.

Imagine a table you write in markdown, like:

| | pro | con |

|——-|————-|————-|

| A |loud |heavy|

| B |light|flimsy|

You can’t have it inlined as just a table, it needs to become a database with filterable columns that you can’t lock, you add each lines as a row etc.

Tables in Confluence are surprisingly good. It just works the way you expect. https://bit.ly/3xtwqXR

Except when doing diffs, then changing something in the table blows it up entirely (well, makes it pretty useless).