And more importantly, when Apple changes some design guidelines, provided you’re using the Cocoa API (which you likely are, if you’re developing for macOS natively), your application will look consistent with the rest of the OS.

Yes, Apple doesn’t care about backwards compatability, so you might have to update your application so that it runs on the latest macOS version, but there’s no way around it.

You either have a gazillion competing frontend APIs to maintain compatability with shit that was written for Windows 3.1, or you don’t care about any of that and end up with almost entirely consistent visual styles across the entire OS.

Sadly we've lost that, as more and more apps everywhere are now developed in Electron or other "cross OS" systems. Even Java apps would try a bit harder to match the OS than these "let's create a new UI paradigm for everything" apps that won't even let you open a second window.

OS X has been great for the past decade. I won't say the same for MacBooks, where there have been some pretty horrible decisions (butterfly keyboard, touch bar), but OS X has kept humming along, very usable, very productive. A few issues with Spotlight and some easily removed nags to use crap like iCloud is the worst I can say.

> butterfly keyboard, touch bar And they admitted their mistake and removed both of these abominations.

They killed the butterfly keyboard in 2019 (almost 4 years after it was introduced), and they killed the touch bar last year.

Yes, it took them some time, but they sorted these things out.

They also spent years telling people how the butterfly keyboard were amazing, despite the feedback they got. It came off like they ignored their customers and said "we know what's best." You can do that in development, but once your customers actually get their hands on the product, it's time to listen to them.

Except the constant ui changes with no reason other than change, with no option to switch them back.

Or the ever more locked down environment, or the iOS style dumbed down apps they prefer now..

I think it was pretty much downhill after leopard :(

Last year I went through every version of macOS from 10.1 to the current release and used each for a couple of weeks. The thing that surprised me the most is just how consistent the user interface has been. Anybody familiar with 10.1 would have no problem using Monterey.

You should write a blog post about this. I'd definitely read it.