It has literally never happened to me. However it happens weekly on Mac, where I will lose the focus of my window and be prompted for an update.

That you can disable in System Preferences. On Windows Home, for example, updates cannot be disabled, and the OS will install them even if this means ruining everything you're doing.

System Preferences -> Notifications -> Do Not Disturb

I set Turn On Do Not Disturb 'from 12:01AM to 11:59PM'

That is really just not true. I don't even think one could consider it an opinion. Irregardless of what Windows does, macOS constantly gets in your way. Try to rename iTunes, because that's the only way to keep it from opening every time you connect your non-Apple Bluetooth headphones (there's a convoluted procedure to do so). Try to control the brightness or volume of an external monitor. You cannot. Even the monitor itself isn't as good as it is on Windows due to poor resolution and text handling on macOS, and a Macbook Pro with a discrete video card struggles to drive the monitor. External mice and keyboards are touch and go with macOS and reset settings nearly on a daily basis for me. Developer tools, such as asdf or others installed from Homebrew are incredibly finicky and often require workarounds depending on whatever macOS version you're on and whatever thing it decided to break. (For example, it's actually easier to get Erlang's observer running on WSL on Windows with the GUI interface than it is on macOS, which requires all sorts of hacks in Homebrew.) I don't know why Apple doesn't get the same hate as Windows, because my Macbook Pro constantly installs stuff all on its own. I get pinged by several apps to update through their own update mechanism on macOS.

My CLI do you mean the Unix-like underlying system (like through Terminal, zsh, bash, etc.)? I enjoy WSL on Windows more because it's actually Linux and usually just works. The only trouble I have there sometimes is network related activities, as is usual for VM-like setups.

And yes, I mean the unix like environment. WSL isn't an option for me on my work computer since our giant corporate IT department has the windows machines on an older build (and locked down to the point of productivity sacrifice) that has poor WSL support. I've used it on my home PC and it works surprisingly well and gets better with each update.

You've merely succeeded in demonstrating many examples of "one mans lackluster features is another mans streamlined interface". All of your examples are things that many people won't run into. External monitor? Non-Apple bluetooth? I don't use either of those so, yes indeed, I find it to be a streamlined interface.

> Try to rename iTunes, because that's the only way to keep it from opening every time you connect your non-Apple Bluetooth headphones (there's a convoluted procedure to do so)

Never happened once with any of my non-Apple Bluetooth headphones. What the ** are you talking about? Do you constantly hit the play button on the headphones when you connect them? That's the only time Apple Music or iTunes would launch without the user starting the app explicitly.

> due to poor resolution and text handling on macOS

Yeah. Apple has basically told everyone without a Retina display to go ** themselves. While Windows does handle those in-between resolutions much better.

>I don't know why Apple doesn't get the same hate as Windows, because my Macbook Pro constantly installs stuff all on its own

You can turn off auto-updates on the Mac. You do know that right?

> Macbook Pro with a discrete video card struggles to drive the monitor.

My guess is that you're using a 2016-2019 MBP. If so, try plugging in the dock/monitor to the right side Thunderbolt ports. For some ungodly reason MBPs tend to throttle if a dock is plugged in on the left side.

Regarding the headphones, it's a common issue. In our case, it was done when the Bluetooth headphones (a model sold in Apple stores!) simply connected, as another commenter mentioned. There's all sorts of forum posts about this with a litany of solutions. The only solution that worked for us was to rename iTunes (the name at the time).

Really? You have a 5120x2880 monitor that macOS is messing up? I've never heard that before. Talk to LG, there's got to be something wrong with it.

>Auto-updates can be turned off on Windows as well. I still get updates I didn't expect on macOS, often when I've told it explicitly not to do so (like when you get the notification requesting it).

Not Apple's fault that you don't know what you're doing. I've turned off auto-updates and nothing updates unless I tell it to. There are some apps that auto-update on their own, like Chrome and Firefox. But they do that on Windows too.

> Regarding the headphones, it's a common issue. In our case, it was done when the Bluetooth headphones (a model sold in Apple stores!) simply connected, as another commenter mentioned.

Basically the headphones that do that send a play command when they connect. Apple will auto-start iTunes/Apple Music when nothing is loaded and play is hit. Yeah, that's annoying. I wish Apple didn't program iTunes that way, but that is entirely the fault of the headphones. That's why bluetooth headphones today don't do that.

I can also confirm that OSX doesn’t have a good case with external monitors, but I am no longer sure that it is possible at all. Frankly, all OSes suck at it so hard that one should just try to avoid the situation. Strangely enough the new Wayland on Linux may be the most adequate at it, though it is still far from perfect.

That said, I agree with your 2010 estimate of Mac software peaking in 2010. Mac laptop hardware is still better than Linux laptop hardware. As someone who's considering my first Linux laptop, I need to balance the inconveniences of Linux hardware now with the likely fact I can probably use that laptop significantly longer than current Mac. Somebody has to pay for all those convenient Mac support folks.

The funny thing about that is that it's only with the Apple Silicon Macs that's true. The 2016-2020 Intel MacBooks were a garbage fire.

Really not my current experience and I use W10 daily at work and W11 at home. Not saying it's a good OS, just saying that your statement is plain wrong.

If certain (third party) apps are annoying then you can control notifications through the focus assist setting just like with any mobile OS.