I'm not just wiping root and leaving home/mail/etc alone. I'm wiping and re-partitioning the local drive.
The partition layout on macOs is fairly complex - on those machines it would be comparable to "Erase all contents and settings" option, but also with a refresh of the immutable OS to the latest released revision (Not always the case on macOS, depending on your recovery drive configuration).
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That said, I don't buy Apple products for personal use - they're far too hostile to their users for me to give them money, and I was always a "function over form" kinda guy in the first place, which is not Apple's market. Apple is the chauffeured car of the computer world... Smooth, Expensive, Hands-Off. I don't always want to drive manual, but I'm not willing to give up the steering wheel... so windows, linux, and bsd for me. Although lately, less and less Windows.
I used to do it once a year, but I'm down to once every other year now. Backup folders get the machine name & year, and put on dropbox/drive/nas/other.
Entire machine is wiped, OS is installed, everything feels so fresh and sparkly. It's a bit like going to the dentist - not exactly fun, but you feel very clean for a bit afterwards.
Really helps also wipe out all the other accumulating cruft you just don't have the time or energy to go delete.