Windows (without additional utilities) allows you to disable mouse acceleration, change scrolling direction, change scrolling speed, and even invert buttons.
Sure MacOS' stock behavior might be fine for you, but that's a different conversation, we're talking about giving the user choice without resorting to hacks here.
> Windows allows you to…change scrolling direction
Within the last 5 years this wasn’t always the case since that’s when I last setup a Windows machine and this definitely was not a setting and I had to edit the registry. Trust me that was not my first choice—I would have much rather used a setting like you can on macOS for scroll direction.
Of course that’s not to say macOS is perfect either. Sounds like they are just now getting around to adding a setting for mouse acceleration. Now, this has always been possible with a “simple” (when compared to the multiple registry edits I had to do on Windows) terminal command—no need to resort to a an additional utility as you imply. Obviously both of these “hacks” as you say are not anything regular consumers are going to be able to do.
With all that said, macOS is closer aligned to how I would do an OS “out of the box”.
Linux too. None of the DEs are all that close to what I'm looking for, and of course building my own desktop from scratch with a window manager, bars, takes as much work as adjusting a DE and then a bunch more.
Sure MacOS' stock behavior might be fine for you, but that's a different conversation, we're talking about giving the user choice without resorting to hacks here.