[Twisell]

Well actually you are both partially right and wrong.

The French Apple layout is closer to the Windows layout than the Mac US version. But it is quite divergent from both US layout and french windows because it included localized typographic enhancements inherited from the 1980's. They basically localized differently on Windows and MacOs.

There is another ISO international flavor of the Apple Keyboard that look closer to the US version but it never took traction in french market. I guess that even if switching from Win/Mac french layout require some time to rewire muscle memory it's still easier than to to opt for international layout.

For instance on both Win/Mac fr by default numbered keys pad require shift to produce number while by default they are used for accentuations.

PS: I have a mechanical Mac Intl ISO keyboard because I sometimes switch to US, but when writing in FR I still as of today use french layout using muscle memory

What is actually ashaming from Apple is that oftentimes some dev oriented shortcuts (like Cmd + Shift + Period) have never been properly localized in macOS which is why using Intl keyboard help in some contexts (it fail because shift is already required to produce "Period" in classical french layout)