What are the features you’d say are required for “professional” use? I can think of a few things that I’d like to see, such as better keyboard navigation and the return of a spatial finder.

But I think that if you asked ten people that question (especially here), you’d get 11 different opinions. So the only option is something that covers a pretty minimalist overlap.

Mostly things that would hurt security unfortunately, e.g. opening up (maybe even requiring) each UI application to be scriptable and (to some extent at least) controlable from the command line (e.g. going full in on ideas like AppleScript and Automator instead of letting those go stale), getting rid of the stupid notarization requirements and quarantine mode for executables downloaded from the the internet, being able to extend OS features with system-wide plugins (e.g. installing new 'data types'), being able to extend the Finder with new features (similar to how TortoiseSVN integrated into the Windows explorer context menues), provide an official package manager (although Homebrew is mostly good enough).

E.g. there should be a toggle which says "this is my computer, I want to do with it what I want, and yes, I know the risks and won't sue Apple if things go sideways").

There kindo of is. Restart in recovery mode, open a terminal and type `csrutil disable`. Also, there are finder extensions that do what you suggest.

Upvoted for useful information that’s harder than it should be to find.

But “maybe brick my box if my hands shake in a weird mode with weird dots” isn’t what GP meant: those of us who are properly backed up and have great net connections can merrily pull stunts like that but it killed the “customize my Mac” apps and stuff, even to the tune of “same size and format of image, even bounce the hash off a server, just square corners”.

So it’s like “pretty sure I’m not driving to the Apple Store today” to “anyone who disagrees with us about shapes should be treated like malware”. That’s quite a leap.

Right now the hardware is such they can pull that: they bought out all the hot shit TSMC stuff.

But Intel 18a is sitting on people’s desks at least under a black cloth: you have to continue to lead on the fundamentals, and hackers liking your shit is maybe the most important one.