Comment by simondotau
12 hours ago
“Looks sleek” was only ever a surface level reason why macOS was a good UI. Far more important was that it was highly opinionated, and those opinions were very consistently applied, resulting in a highly predictable interface.
This has been degrading over the past decade, unfortunately.
Opinionated design is a big one, but another that's equally as big and even more unusual in the Linux world is progressive disclosure.
It basically amounts to adding lots of little power user features, but placing them ever so slightly out of the way so that newbies and less technical users don't get overwhelmed, but they're still within reach of those who can make use of them and reveal themselves as users grow and become more technically capable.
Linux desktops tend to take a much more binary approach: ultra-minimalist and stripped back so far that even iPadOS is more capable out of the box (GNOME) or everything and the kitchen sink on full display (KDE).