Apple had to switch CPU architectures and build their just to make their OS feel as snappy as KDE and Gnome does on mid-tier hardware. I wonder how long it will take until enough technical debt accumulates to a point where Mac OS feels like it drags again.
The absolute worst was the transition to SSDs if you were stuck on a hard to upgrade HDD-based Mac. It became super clear that Apple devs stopped caring in the span of a year.
A recent blog post in the Apple fanboy world posited that Apple has slow, non-user-adjustable animations that make the OS feel slow. That's basically why a user thinks KDE or Gnome is snappier. It has nothing to do with CPU architecture.
I still have an Intel Mac and it doesn't feel significantly slower than one with Apple silicon.
Last time I installed Gnome I had to install an extension to remove the 150ms delay on alt-tabbing that is present even when animations are disabled. It became snappy after that.
Rubbish. You Linux-only guys post this nonsense on any thread criticising competing OSs thinking the rest of us have no experience using them. I daily-drive older hardware (Xeon E5 with 16GB RAM and GTX 1080 ti), which is essentially all midtier is, and GNOME is a stuttery mess. It struggles to drive 4K. It's slow to load software, and what is available is often a UX mess (what have they got against menus?!). Discoverability is low. Disk access is slow. Tried BTRFS, ZFS and Ext4 - none of them make a difference. KDE is no better - how many modals or check boxes are needed for one option?
See, we can all pour scorn on other operating systems. The real problem lies in the expectations that people place upon these platforms. Despite my complaints, I actually enjoy using Linux on a desktop (laptops are another story). If I listened to a lot of you, my expectations would definitely not be met.
The absolute worst was the transition to SSDs if you were stuck on a hard to upgrade HDD-based Mac. It became super clear that Apple devs stopped caring in the span of a year.