[montgomery_r]

I think the criticisms of the current software stack are well founded. There is friction there, stuff doesnt work that should. OP even neglected to mention the glaring Finder column view bugs or the Taboe corner radius window selection issues. But as a user since System 6.x, including A/UX and MacOS X since public beta - it was ever thus. Macintosh pre OSX was well known as an acronym for Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs. After OSX, Snow Leopard was needed to clear cruft.

The hardware is in sparkling form. Perhaps the software is closer to average. Where would you pick the next leader from - the hw side or the sw side?!

[jtfrench]

Working on Snow Leopard was one of my most rewarding experiences at Apple. Loved the ethos behind that update. No new fluff, just make everything work better.

[montgomery_r]

Totally agreed! And I loved Snow Leopard. (And I still love Mac OS - just making the point, there have always been things to complain about :-) )

[DrScientist]

Why oh why for example can't you resize the System Settings window?

If you are in the wallpaper view - there is content off the screen to the right, but no visible scroll bar, nor ability to resize. The only way to scroll appears to use the keyboard to navigate the wallpapers ( which has the side effect of setting them ).

I don't expect these kind of UI issues on MacOS.

[DrScientist]

On the other hand - the transition from Intel to ARM, which has totally transformed their hardware offering, was pretty seamless and is down to large part good software.