There were hacks for absolutely everything. Simpler times...
When they moved them into a row and changed the way multi-screen worked it completely lost its usefulness for me. Before that I always used a 3x3 grid. It was one of the many ways macOS evolved against the grain for me.
Other major regressions: LaunchPad (cool for iPad users I guess but completely ridiculous on a 24" screen - Even Microsoft moved back from this). The incessant power saving tricks imposed that are all but impossible to switch off (I use mainly desktops so I care about performance, not battery). Notarisation, every app calling home to Apple every time it's run.. Wtf. Then there was Apple "Server" which became more of a joke with every release (the Leopard version was the last real one).
But really what it told me was that I hate an OS where every year some people sit around a table and decide what I should want changed, and offer no way to choose. In other words: I hate opinionated software.
I recently moved to KDE and wow, it's so amazing to have all the things I missed back. And also a more useful expose-style function again though the relative window sizing is unfortunately something it doesn't do.
64-bit started for me back when the G5 came out, and today that G5 screams, easily feeling as responsive as my girlfriend’s M1 MacBook Air most of the time.
It’s almost unbelievable how the G5 performs like it’s got bloody Sonic the Hedgehog trapped in there on a hamster wheel generator. My Intel machines never came close, and a lot of it seemed to have to do with major bloat as the OS moved along. Probably also bloat in Logic. My G5 can handle the hell of a lot more effects and VSTs with about 50% the impact they have on my Intel machines. It’s surreal.
I also find it absolutely pathetic and astounding that up until this year (16 inch MBP excluded) the maximum RAM a MacBook could have was the equivalent of a computer I got in 2005. 15 years later I still couldn’t get even 32GB RAM in a MacBook. And it was soldered so it couldn’t be upgraded. Shameful.
But yeah these things were beasts. The dual-CPU and then the dual dual-core were seriously impressive. I really wanted one at the time but could not justify it. I finally got one for €100 2 years ago, now it sits next to a G4 Cube. Both are some exceptional pieces of engineering.
Or there was a hack to backport certain things from Snow Leopard onto Leopard PPC...
It is real Snow Leopard with a Snow Leopard kernel, but a lot of components are copied over from Leopard, and there are still a lot of issues. I'm not clear as to whether or not anyone has gotten graphics acceleration working, for example—it certainly doesn't work on most models.
Tiger was solid - Leopard was where it was at. Snow Leopard may be my favourite, but as I can’t run it on any of my PPC systems I have no excuse to run it anymore.