After having used MacOS for some while now my perception of it being entirely unusable and just annoying changed and I started to also see it as what it is. Just another OS.
However it is not all rainbows and unicorn (as with every OS). Therefore here is a more detailed list of things that I consider actually annoying instead of just dismissing the OS in its entirety all together.
Things I find annoying *after* starting to use a MacBook for work (that @Apple hopefully helps fixing):
- The detached single Menu bar, sorry but annoying for multitasking.
- No touchscreen (for scrolling and highlighting text in PDF documents, mainly)
- Right click is extremely buggy (regardless of setting, the trackpads right click sometimes doesn't register for ages and more annoying it registers it as left click instead)
- libvritd/qemu doesn't have spice support
- hvf lacks a 1st party gui (it would be nice to just have a very basic virtual machine manager, maybe even just a whitelabeled virt-manager + libvirtd out of the box)
- "passt" (user space networking) not available, mainly cause virt-manager doesn't support SLIRP port forwarding
- Signing into an apple ID within a hvf VM. It's just annoying having to download apps on the host and then copy them via e.g. ssh into the VM to install them. Also everything that uses Apple ID for SSO doesn't work obviously...
- How attachments are displayed in the Mail client
- The mailclient automatically and (without clear indication) forwarding all attachments of the previous conversation when forwarding a mail. In some cases it just bloats mails unnecessarily in others it (may) disclose too much information...
- How unnecessarily complicated it is to setup HVF VMs.
- Limitation of not being able to running x86_64 guests within HVF (e.g. via Rosetta2)
- Not (easily) being able to dual boot multiple MacOS installs (e.g. one MDM managed for work and one for private/gaming/... with separate encryption keys and without access to each other)
- Ability to fine tune permission grants. E.g. application requests "access to documents" but being able to "fake grant" [app thinks its granted] that access and show either a different folder or a sub-folder instead)
- Strange bugs in e.g. Safari and stuff that uses it's APIs, like e.g. Microsoft Logins downloading an empty file named "preload"
- Keyboard Layout, why not at least offer to have a standard layout? Esp. "@" key on the Apple-German-Layout is annoying I always accidentally lock the device (esp. not "Alt Gr", so I often press "^ + ⌘ + Q" instead before realizing that that is the shortcut for locking the screen. Next I remember that the OS key and Option key are swapped and try "^ + ⌥ + Q" which however results in the "«" character. And only then I recall it's on "^ + ⌘ + L"). Tbh I'd agree with "just get familiar with the Apple way", however it's quite annoying when you're a sysadmin that also uses Remotion and also deals with all of the other systems, e.g. Windows, Linux, BSD, ... where it always is "Ctrl+Alt+Q"
- Remoting, keys are more randomly reallocated. Depending on the tool it may or may not transparently swap the Option and Command key for one. The inconsistency is quite annoying. Esp. when you have to use both tools simultaneously. Like e.g. MS-Teams take control and MS-RDP
- MacOS not being able to receive files via bluetooth file transfers. Yea I know there is AirDrop, but everything else has bluetooth file transfers instead (Android, Windows, Linux, ...)
- Not being able to software disable an (apparently connected) screen. Reverting to mirroring is quite annoying, esp. If the "screen" is special purpose or not currently turned on. Esp. When you've a dock at some location but do not want to use the screen, e.g. because it is also connected to other devices and they're currently selected as input, makes it annoying.
- Lack of a USB-A port (at least one would be great to plug the external mouse and keyboard dongle into it)
- Lack of a RJ-45 Jack, tbh rarely needed these days but it is quite useful for debugging esp. in the field when you want to quickly plug yourself into somewhere and check (I can understand the normal devices not having it anymore, but it also being missing on the Pro lineup is upsetting)
- Safari not showing the link you're about to click at the bottom corner. Tbh this and the "preload" file issue are what make me consider switching to a chromium browser.
- Apps staying open (and in the dock) after their last window is closed
- iCloud encryption not being enabled by default
- Firewall not being enabled by default
- "Limit IP address tracking", Proxy being *only* an (Wifi-)Network specific setting
- Missing WPS
- No proxy cap support
- Doesn't appear to support a local Proxy Auto-Configuration (PAC) file, annoying for advanced and development work related uses where you'd like to overwrite some specific destination to point to e.g. a localhost proxy
- Hard to identify and debug issues related to "Limit IP address tracking" option, even for advanced users it is not clear when it is or isn't being used. Esp. It says "in Mail and Safari" specifically in the description, is it used for other things too or not?Is it like a proxy? How to use it for other things? Like e.g. MS-Teams, a game, git clones, ...?
- X11/Wayland APIs being missing
- Background Items, not being able to fake enable for a misbehaving app, like e.g. prevent "Microsoft AutoUpdate" or "Microsoft Officce Licensing" from always running.
Tl;Dr: A bunch of small annoyances instead of the OS itself being perceived as entirely unusable and annoying