"I chose a platform because the platform and the apps meet my set of priorities."
You listed a wonderful set of priorities which put the philosophy and a certain kind of usability at the top. GP seems to value day-to-day UI/UX within the desktop.
So question for you, with regards to cross-platform, insofar as you value it as a goal, is that to help spread the user base of libre software?
Essentially, yes. As a developer, I'd like my work to be available to as many people as possible, and I'm not dogmatic enough to insist that they choose to use Linux or another libre OS as their platform. If I want users of other platforms to be able to use my work, I need to somehow do cross-platform development. That means either creating my own cross-platform toolkit, or using an existing one.
As a side note, I'd also say that cross-platform development turns out to be great for finding bugs and design flaws in your software. Exposing it to other compilers, linkers and UI/UX design models has always been a positive experiences, even if often frustrating.
And what good is this supposed “technical superiority” if it doesn’t have any end use benefit? Does it integrate with my other hardware seamlessly like my headphones that switch automatically between my phone, computer and watch? I can start an SMS message thread on my phone and finish on my computer or if I’m sitting at my computer and my phone rings, I answer it from my computer? Does it give me 16 hours of battery life?
And the Mac is kind of known to be great for audio editing if you’re not aware and has first rate software.
I haven’t heard anyone say that the ARM based Mac are poor performers
> I like being in control of my technology in a way that Microsoft and Apple increasingly do not allow me to be.
Would I rather be “in control” of hardware that sounds like a 747 when you do something even mildly intensive with piss poor battery life by modern standards or have a laptop that I can actually work with on my lap and have 16 hour battery life?
My AMD system has better audio performance than any Apple system I could buy (and I can even run Mojave on it, with better $-per-cpu-cycle than anything Apple would sell me), despite Apple systems indeed having great audio subsystems.
I rarely use headphones, but when I do they are studio quality ones that do not use bluetooth, and are fed via my studio gear, not random consumer devices.
Look, I get that different users have different needs. I'm not trying to persuade you not to use Apple products. I just happen to think that the focus on "how good is this for my day to day needs" can obscure a more important long term truth. Farmers have been discovering this with John Deere for the last few years, another company that makes incredibly great hardware that is totally what their users need. It just turns out the Deere's model of buyer lock-in via repair control is now causing conflicts for those same users.
When the app is not there (e.g. a DAW), I merely choose to spend a few decades of my life developing it, thus destroying my ability to do what I originally wanted to :)
As for why would you prefer Linux as the daily driver, that would depend a lot on what you were doing/needed. It is a technically superior in almost every respect (not every, but close). It has better audio latency performance, should that matter, better bandwidth for most things, is generally more customizable to your own preferences (though obviously other platforms may be customizable enough). Upgrades and maintainance is generally simpler and smoother. I like being in control of my technology in a way that Microsoft and Apple increasingly do not allow me to be.
I'm not saying that you have to care about any of that. I do, that's all.