I don't know when it deteriorated on Mac OS X, but I've recently started to use Rectangle a lot (https://rectangleapp.com/). This has been really useful.
There isn't a maximise behaviour. Per the interface guidance, that button is called "zoom" [1], not maximise, and it therefore makes sense that apps do something different depending on what they need to zoom in a way that makes sense for them.
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
The button now serves dual purpose as "full screen" and "zoom" (with option). It's not "maximise" though.
That said, their stability and flexibility is unmatched. Windows got a lot better recently, and they have a harder surface to deal with (orders of magnitude more hardware to support). But from an outsiders perspective Apple's feel like the best balance right now.
Windows and Linux just can't come close. I get why Linux never will for good reasons but Windows has absolutely no excuse.
Pretty much every actual window management feature on macOS aside from dragging windows by the titlebar is janky as hell. :-\
(It is neat that display server crashes/restarts on macOS don't cause you to lose your graphical session, though. Idk if any F/OSS WMs have that.)