> The problem with stating that 27 is an improvement over 26 is that it's ignoring the elephant in the room.

You’re over thinking things. People made a closed statement. It isn’t meant as a multiple paragraph essay on the progression of macOS over the timeline of 20 years. But that doesn’t make the statement any less valid.

> It doesn't make any sense for the conversation to just stop there

The conversation didn’t stop there. We are having it still right now.

> and implicitly forgive all of the regressions 26 brought as water under the bridge.

That’s not what the aforementioned statement claims. You’re adding your own emphasis here, an emotive slant which skews the statement to mean something it didn’t.

> macOS 15 isn't just some nebulous hypothetical alternative, it's a readily-available example of what Apple actually shipped in recent history, and it should be a point of reference in discussions like this. Narrowly focusing on 27 vs 26 while ignoring 15 doesn't make any more sense than praising Windows 8.1 for fixing some problems from Windows 8 when neither was worth upgrading from Windows 7 for most people.

The reason 15 was referenced was because it’s an incremental improvement rather than introducing big new features. Just like 27 is. So in that regard, it makes more sense to compare 27 to 26 than include all of the other points of reference that you are.

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I’m usually the first to criticise macOS. I only hate it slightly less than Windows. But you’re making emotive claims to an objective statement and complaining that others aren’t doing the same.