> … for technical users it's a pretty noticeable step down in terms of how you may use and configure your own system

It’s such a frustrating experience on both ends—I use macOS for most of my work because I like the hardware it ships on, but it is so annoying to not be able to, like, use a different window manager (hacky accessibility API systems notwithstanding).

On the other hand I’ve probably burnt weeks troubleshooting and configuring different compositors/window managers on Arch (and STILL don’t have the setup of my dreams), so it’s frustrating on that end too.