Comment by vintagedave

Yes! Same here! And the same disk space issue.

I remember switching to Mac OS from Windows. That was back in the days where you had to restart Windows, and Windows apps could steal focus. Mac OS X: rarely restarted, soon moving for a good decade to never; and apps could not steal focus, the Dock icon bounced.

Where are we today? I reboot macOS regularly, deal with the same frustrating issues on login, and when I type sometimes a dialog or app steals my keystrokes. That includes permissions dialogs, 'Foo wants to access your Documents folder'. I do not know every app I have granted permissions to, because I do know that I was typing in a text field and the dialog appeared as I was doing it.

I feel there's a loss there of valuing:

* Uptime, or rather, lack of interruption and losing state, as a value for users

* Control: the user is using an app, respect that and don't allow other apps to disrespect and take control away from it, again as value or attitude towards users.

The worst part about the apps restarting is not that they do it, though today it feels a hack to mostly-not-quite restore state that shouldn't have been lost in the first place. It's how long it takes. I have an Apple Silicon Mac. It can take over a minute for apps to restore, Spaces to switch as they re-maximise, etc. And forget trying to interact during that time: if you want to quit an app (say) it's risky because any other app can steal focus and you find yourself in another app while trying to deal with the first.

And Spaces restoration? I have a permanent black Space. It belongs to Parallels, which is actually on another space. And I have one Space with multiple windows: they belong to Fork, and each one should be in its own Space, but they overlap like a mini windowing system.

The bugs. I realise I sound like I'm complaining, but... I am. I paid money for this and I know how good it used to be. I've been seriously looking at Linux and maybe KDE Plasma recently. There's little barrier to switching, not when you actively annoy your users and push them. I did it once (to Mac), and I've been thinking, well, I can do it again.