Honestly that's subjective. I preferred GNOME, but to each their own. There's too much flashiness for my taste, and some icons and UI just look like something for kids (big, bright, round).

> ecosystem/3rd party integrations

Eh. A big part of that ecosystem is paid for really basic features. The App Store requires an iCloud account to be used. That ecosystem also relies on various hacks to achieve things which are IMHO rather basic - like Karabiner which is a keylogger, just so you can do relatively basic key remapping. What's stopping Apple from saying keyloggers are no longer allowed in the next version, like how they broke all VPNs by deprecating the existing framework used by all of them? Also there are entire, sometimes paid, apps to do basic features the OS should support itself, like having a different scroll direction between the touchpad and mouse.

The hardware, in it's current iteration ( no butterfly keyboard), is very good. I don't particularly care about magsafe ( i keep knocking it off by mistake, which puts the device to sleep) or the giant touchpad that weirdly strains my palm when using it for prolonged periods of time, but those are purely personal. Can't wait to be able to run Linux on an M* Apple device, I might even buy one.