Snow Leopard was a high point for stability and speed. Unfortunately, changing expectations of integrations and feature demands meant they couldn't stay there.

What is rose-tinted is the OP's remembering the OSes of a few years ago being great. Mojave and Catalina had a bunch of annoyances and weren't as good at recovering from a bad install or a bad update push as Monterey and Ventura. Not that Monterey and Ventura are great either.