macOS Ventura is now released. I've always been a day-one upgrader when it comes to new versions of macOS. But I have to say, it feels less and less fun every year. The Mac hardware is so good now with the switch to Apple Silicon chips. But man, I feel that the software is not going in the same direction. The new System Preferences app, now called System Settings, is for a lack of a better word — a joke. It's ugly, it's unintuitive, it's slow/sluggish, and it's buggy. Stage Manager feels like a gimmick that no one asked for (ignoring the fact that it's totally broken).
I remember the keynote where Apple addressed the question "Are you merging iOS and macOS?" and a big NO came crashing down. But I feel that's what's happening, slowly but surely. I'm all in when it comes to SwiftUI and stuff like that. It's great to be able to write for multiple platforms with a single code base. But the UI controls and affordances should remain optimized for each platform. The new clock app, for example, doesn't feel like a Mac app at all. It's just the iOS version scaled up, running in a window.
I remember a time when new OS versions got so much better every year / new version. I wish Apple would just focus on refining macOS. Fixing long-due bugs, making things faster, etc. A new SMB / SAMBA implementation that's on par with Windows would be nice. Don't want to be the guy who says "Steve Jobs would turn in his grave", but I think there was a time when Apple really cared about making well-designed Mac software. It could be that Apple no longer has enough good Mac developers in-house. Maybe they all left the ship? Who knows.