The finder in what you linked was nigh-unusable for me. My impressions:

- Where is the ability to easily split/tab for side-by-side directory comparison?

- Every directory is opened in a new window, which makes everything even more jarring

- (Do I just not know how to operate the window manager?)

- Is the not grid-aligned icon position saved? This seems like a long-term usability nightmare.

- How can I create something other than a directory?

- Where is the location bar?

Then again, I'm not familiar with old OR new macOS, so I might have a similar first experience with the new finder.

What I found nice is the UI/UX consistency. Modern systems don't really have that anymore, with all the accumulated partial UI overhauls and different UI libraries.

Everything in the settings. Default is boring. And there are tons of extensions in GitHub which actually works unlike Nautilus.

Oh - the Good old MacOS days (pree y2k) - agree the Finder from MacOS 9 was really pleasant to use.

These days I’m in love with Total Commander (yes I mainly use Win+WSL2), but I know of several TC style File Managers are available for the Macintosh)

And i do know that TC was cloned/inspirere from ’mc’ (to give credit…!)

And 'mc' was a clone of Norton Commander! I don't know if it had precursors, but I'd be interested if anyone does.

> a massive regression from what it used to be

So is Gnome Files, and in very similar ways.