Unfortunately Elementary's devs are too busy finding the right shades for the dark theme so there is no time left for your marginal features. These problems and bugs are not tackled for years.
Good looking design is something people tend take for granted until it's gone.
If I'm going to be staring at something for many hours every day, those details really do matter to me. I tend to be able to fix everything else on my own.
>If I'm going to be staring at something for many hours every day,
Most people would stare at an IDE and browser many hours and not at the DE control's panel or File Manager, and IMO this core apps should have had the UI fixed years ago and not have stuff still changed at each updated.
> IMO this core apps should have had the UI fixed years ago and not have stuff still changed at each updated.
I don't think elementaryOS's visuals have changed all that much? Certainly nothing like macOS, which has gone from Mavericks → Yosemite/Catalina → Big Sur in the same time frame.
I'm just arguing because I feel like talking to someone.
But perhaps it's okay for this one distro to have an obsession with visual design? Maybe your anger should be at the distros that do all the things you want but are too ugly to use?
I work for Apple. I’ve definitely used a Mac. I’ve also used Elementary. Of course there are differences but overall the design is extremely derivative.
I thought so until I gave the thing a mini-review recently.
Sure, it has a dock at the bottom and a panel at the top, but so do dozens of desktops now. It's the default layout of XFCE. That tells us nothing useful.
It doesn't have a menu bar. It doesn't have a repositionable dock. It doesn't have Miller columns. It doesn't have a folder structure anything even vaguely like macOS'. It doesn't have app folder bundles, or drag-and-drop installation. There are no desktop icons, not even as an option.
Apps don't have menus at all except a hamburger in some. Windows don't have title bars, they have something like CSD.
It's a Linux. It's a slightly weird Linux but it's way less Mac-like than, say, GoboLinux is under the hood.
Just because the desktop is quite clean and minimal, and there's a GNOME-like panel at the top, it has a passing cosmetic resemblance, no more.
You could make Budgie, LXDE or LXQt, or MATE look much more like the macOS desktop than Pantheon is or could be.
If anything it's more like iOS with overlapping windows than anything Mac-like.
- The folders inside your Home folder, which absolutely resembles macOS
Is everything a pixel for pixel rip? No. Does it use the same technology? No. But the UI/UX is more than just “inspired by” Apple. “Cosmetic resemblance” seems to suggest these things are coincidence, but when it’s clearly not.
Also used by default in XFCE, Unity, GNOME 3, Budgie; optional in LXDE, LXQT, KDE, MATE. Also used in Windows 10 and 11. Rejected.
> Files aka Finder
Not significantly more Mac-like than Nautilus, Nemo, etc. Rejected.
- Code aka Xcode
XCode is an IDE. Elementary Code is a text editor. Every desktop GUI has a text editor. Rejected.
- Global status bar icons
As also used in XFCE, GNOME, MATE, Unity, LXDE, LXQt, & every version of Windows since 1995. Can't be customised; ordinary Linux apps can't add new ones. Rejected.
> PiP
> DND
> Screen Time
Since I am not sure what you mean by them, no comment.
If "DND" means Do Not Disturb, GNOME 3 has this too.
> App Store
As used in every modern distro/OS. GNOME has one, Ubuntu has one, Windows has had one since 2012. Rejected.
> Mail
Again, every GUI OS has this. Rejected.
> Calendar
Again, every modern OS has one. Click the clock in XFCE, for instance. Rejected.
- Camera
Ever seen "Cheese"? Rejected.
- System Settings
Every OS has this, and most call them Settings because Microsoft uses "Control Panel". macOS calls them "System Preferences". Rejected.
> The folders inside your Home folder, which absolutely resembles macOS
100% standard Linux layout, and share the same names as the defaults in Windows as well. I remove the Linux ones and symlink the ones on my Windows partition so they stay in sync, and even the icons automatically reappear because the names are 100% identical.
It is not only unreasonable to claim that a list of features that basically _every modern OS_ has mean that one OS in particular is a copy of OS X, it is laughably ridiculous.
On this basis, I could also list a set of features that OS X copied from Windows which were missing in Classic MacOS and NeXTstep (Alt-tab app switching, keyboard dialog box navigation, Safe Boot Mode, Fast User Switching, etc. etc.) to claim that OS X is a copy of Windows.
If I'm going to be staring at something for many hours every day, those details really do matter to me. I tend to be able to fix everything else on my own.