All those projects, hellosystem, this one, I guess I've seen one or two more before — all of them are just kind of missing the whole point.
I would say the current KDE Plasma is somewhat starting to approach any amount of finesse at all. Hope they continue, at least they've learned from the whole KDE4 kerfuffle.
But I will relent and acknowledge that your arguments ring very true. How do I get my Messages window back if I accentally close it? Very good point.
The ribbon though? I think your memory is optimistic. It was in my memory ugly, clunky, slow and had some, but few system settings. But I must admit that in my heart OS 7.1 was the high water mark of usability and I resented all subsequent innovations... which it sounds like you might be able to empathize with.
Just checked it: Cmd+N (New) will pop it right back. If you don't want the stupid new message, Cmd+0 will do the trick.
The ribbon had all the settings for the OS, and was always a click away. Finder worked out of the box. These days, copy-paste is hit or miss, and the window manager can’t be reliably controlled via the keyboard.
Also, even in first party apps, keyboard shortcuts are completely inconsistent. Command-0 no longer reliably restores the main window. In maps, Command-L doesn’t focus the location bar like it does in safari; it repositions the map to your GPS location.
Even the keyboard is a shitshow. Notes aggressively autocorrects technical terms to random words on the latest MacOS, but nothing else does, and I can’t find the second “turn off autocorrect” setting that it must be using instead of the OS-wide one (which is definitely disabled).
Current OS X’s UI and filesystem layout are a cruel parodies of OS 9. It’s like a bunch of Shoggoths or an army of slightly better LLMs tried to recreate OS 9, borg-style.
Apple mostly adds software features by acquiring stuff, storyboarding UIs, demoing a prototype to an exec, and then shipping it, so I guess that’s how it got so weird.
Anyway, I wouldn’t say the result has finesse.