>Is macOS UX actually well thought out to begin with?

To begin with, yes. The decline only started around ten years ago.

If you take an Apple computer from the early OSX releases (an iMac G4 from 2002, for example), you will be able to use it exactly as you use macos today. This indicates a success for UX.

You cannot say the same about GNOME3 or Windows 11 versus XP - Windows 11 has some baffling Settings app and also a Control Panel, being a mashup of different ideas and UI elements (and toolkits! see MMC snap-ins versus the UI of Settings).

The only difference is recent trends to dumb-down the UI to be more iPad-like, and this trend of Etch-A-Sketchification of the macos UI is not something to be welcomed.

Density is way down on UI elements for one. OS X used to feel like a Workstation. With every release macOS feels closer to a toy. Touch is great for convenience, but not getting into the weeds with “real” work.

Er… Yes they have. Liquid Glass is awful. It’s not only ugly (that’s preference, though), it has definitely negatively affected the UX. That’s why they’re adding sliders and options and reversal left and right.

> e.g., the (x) button on notifications do not display unless a mouse is hovering over the notification badge

Same applies to spaces where there's also delay applied before it appears for whatever reason. It would be nice if this fixed (on non-touch Macs as well).

Mouse affordances don't usually ruin it for keyboard preferrers. Keyboard shortcuts and control are often an afterthought or downright written off because "they can just click" but thats down to laziness or lack of care than some hard and fast rule. However, a keyboard affordance is usually invisible, and a mouse affordance isn't, so they can very happily co-exist without affecting one another. For instance, the Alt modifiers in menus in classic Windows, those have almost no effect at all on anyones ability to click the menu item with a mouse.

Touch affordances and UI does have to be visible, and there is only one screen. So the touch affordances and mouse affordances are mutually exclusive: targets get larger, padding expands, UI gets dumbed down, etc etc.

I can't think of cases where mouse affordances necessarily, intrinsically make things worse for keyboard users.

Of course, there's the extremely common case of keyboard support being half-assed or missing from GUI apps. But that's not mouse affordances making things worse, that's developers just not having the time or inclination to have great keyboard support.

Whereas, touch affordances seem like they'll be a lot more disruptive.

Just look at Windows 8?

I'm still on Sequoia for this reason. I want a UI optimized for displaying text content and mouse and keyboard control. Mostly keyboard. I definitely don't want the larger border radius on the windows that would seem to be designed for touch.

Isn't that his point though ? Their plan seems to half-ass touch support (i.e. the menu bar, minimize/close buttons, etc. all stay in their current size), so it seems like a waste of hardware to include a touch screen just for very little functionality. If instead they make the UI friendly to fat fingers, they'd very much affect the mouse/trackpad experience.