Don’t know why you’re being downvoted; those are legitimate complaints if you’re coming from Windows. I felt the same way years ago, when I switched (2014-ish).
What about Finder do you not like? It’s pretty customizable. Also, I use Spotlight (Command + Space) more than Finder, I think – it’s probably the number one killer day-to-day feature. Calculator, file search, metadata search, web search all rolled into one.
The other major thing I appreciate about MacOS is that it still exposes lower-level system and device settings if you need it to. Not to the extent of Linux, obviously, but I think they’ve struck a good balance between abstracting the magic and revealing what’s behind the curtain.
In contrast, I have a Windows 10 gaming desktop; that’s literally its only purpose in life, to launch Steam. Granted, at this point I’m very unfamiliar with Windows, having ceased major use of it after Windows 7, but I feel like it hides too much. For example, a few weeks ago I had a lengthy ISP outage, and so I wanted to use my iPhone’s hotspot to get connectivity. Everything I read online said it was as simple as plugging the phone in and accepting the connection, but that wasn’t my experience. Before you blame Apple, this isn’t the crux of the story. I eventually got it to work by disabling the network adapter on my PC. What became difficult was re-enabling it the next day, when my ISP had restored service. I’ve since learned that Device Manager still exists, but I swear I couldn’t find it on that day. The disabled adapter didn’t appear in any of the various Network-related options I looked through, and the only way I got it to work was by finding an option to reset networking settings. On a Mac, the disabled adapter would still be visible in the list, and could easily be re-enabled.
From what I can remember I was expecting drag and drop of files with multiple windows each snapped to the side of the screen to work intuitively but I accept that I was probably thinking of a Windows way of doing this instead of finding the best way to do things on MacOS.
I should probably retry MacOS with this in mind. Thinking of it I suppose I expected MacOS to be as intuitive as iOS, which is a bit unfair.
Your experience with Windows hiding settings reflects mine- I think it's partly because of the mix of modern and classic menus and the latter being harder to find. Using things like Microsoft PowerToys and custom registry settings makes the Windows experience better but you could argue that this should be standard as well.
> Thinking of it I suppose I expected MacOS to be as intuitive as iOS...
It is intuitive, but by the sounds of things you have several years, or decades of Windows muscle memory and experience. If you fight against the way the OS works by expecting to match your experience with a different one, you're in for a bad time.
Apple introduced window snapping in macOS 15. It works, but there are better apps that perform the task. I don't use any myself; I've been a Mac user for over 35 years and have never felt the need to have my document windows tiled.
The menu is a discoverability gift! Pro tip - type a command in the search box under the 'Help" menu in any native app, and it will show you where to find it and show the shortcut if one is assigned.
macOS user gestures extensively for navigation around the OS, so look in the 'Trackpad' settings, where it shows the gestures and allows a degree of customisation.
Edit: Regarding external monitors, Apple haven't sold a non-Retina display for quite a while now. Apple being Apple expect you to buy one of their monitors, or at least one that they've blessed, so 4K really is a minimum.
What about Finder do you not like? It’s pretty customizable. Also, I use Spotlight (Command + Space) more than Finder, I think – it’s probably the number one killer day-to-day feature. Calculator, file search, metadata search, web search all rolled into one.
The other major thing I appreciate about MacOS is that it still exposes lower-level system and device settings if you need it to. Not to the extent of Linux, obviously, but I think they’ve struck a good balance between abstracting the magic and revealing what’s behind the curtain.
In contrast, I have a Windows 10 gaming desktop; that’s literally its only purpose in life, to launch Steam. Granted, at this point I’m very unfamiliar with Windows, having ceased major use of it after Windows 7, but I feel like it hides too much. For example, a few weeks ago I had a lengthy ISP outage, and so I wanted to use my iPhone’s hotspot to get connectivity. Everything I read online said it was as simple as plugging the phone in and accepting the connection, but that wasn’t my experience. Before you blame Apple, this isn’t the crux of the story. I eventually got it to work by disabling the network adapter on my PC. What became difficult was re-enabling it the next day, when my ISP had restored service. I’ve since learned that Device Manager still exists, but I swear I couldn’t find it on that day. The disabled adapter didn’t appear in any of the various Network-related options I looked through, and the only way I got it to work was by finding an option to reset networking settings. On a Mac, the disabled adapter would still be visible in the list, and could easily be re-enabled.