MacOS is Better
If you're going to start a war, strike hard, so this one should do the trick.
Seriously, as a life long "hater" of Macs and Apple in general, this conclusion has come as a great surprise to me. When you boil it down, there's really little difference between Windows and MacOS apart from the way they approach and accomplish the same task. For example, on the keyboard, CMD vs CTRL to invoke most of the same operations; File Explorer vs Finder (both excel in different areas; both suck in different ways); both use guardrails and limit your free wheeling to greater or lesser extents on both platforms...
BUT
The clear difference is the integration of software and hardware. Windows is everywhere on every conceivable hardware configuration, and now they've jumped to TWO different processor platforms. MacOS is the fence around Apple's walled garden, and is very tightly controlled by the mother ship, but that helps bring cross device compatibility and functionality that Windows owners can only daydream of. Above all, because Apple controls the OS and the hardware, the mantra of "it just works" has really come home to me as a frustrated Windows victim. I really wanted WOA to to succeed this time, and I knew there would be rough patches, but the brick walls (printing, scanning, pen performance in OneNote, etc.) and constant MS "push" (Edge; OneDrive; advertising; Copilot) brought back a lot of bad memories.
Am I beng a bit fanboyish - perhaps so - but it has only come of late (not more than one year). Keep in mind, I still hate Apple for what it is not doing with iPadOS. But the thing is, MS "owns" Windows and Surface, and yet the OS works no better or any more consistently on their own hardware than the OEM's - and it has been that way for decades.
Yes, you have to trade part of your computing soul (and coin) for that Apple experience, but is that any worse than MS stealing your soul (and coin) with every patch, upgrade, and OS design change? Was Goethe really forshadowing a bargain with Apple?
PS - if Desertlap's rumored 11" Surface Pro 11 drops (with 5g and replaceable SSD - or not less than 512gb if part of the SOC) will I be looking - OF COURSE!
I wholeheartedly agree that they are consistently making it suck more and more. XP was fantastic, and in a lot of ways was similar to Mac now. It just worked. Every iteration since has added needless complications for the sake of trends, or bad UX research.
I used to make fun of Mac products for making tiny incremental changes, but otherwise just basically being the same thing for the past 20 years, but honestly, now I see the value of that. Yes, they don't usually have the latest and greatest, and are almost always behind 1-2 years on any trends or enhancements, but that gives them time to think it out and see how trends work out in the long run. When they come out with a foldable phone will it be any better than Samsung's offering? Most likely not. It will surely be missing several features. But it will work smoothly and consistently when it happens. (And it'll be "Magical" 🙄)
My point though is, yes, wholeheartedly at this point, MacOS is better than Windows, who just keeps making things suck. I'd much rather have consistency on my productivity machine.
Now on the phone side, Android blows iOS out of the water. Other than this recent AI trend, it gets better with every iteration, and is ahead of iOS in every way.