I don't think so. They probably could have been written better, they weren't written poorly, but it's really hard to write 200 unit tests for a feature that don't break when the feature is updated.
Some years ago, I was hearing about people switching from PCs to Macs all the time. Later, not so much, but macOS was still getting praise. Maybe Apple looked at the conversion numbers at that time and decided that the cost of keeping up the quality of macOS wasn’t worth the few PC converts they were still getting, and they figured that not enough people would switch back to PCs since the iOS system lock-in effects, etc. would present enough of a barrier.
So it’s not that there aren’t still people who could conceivably switch to Macs, it’s that Apple decided they didn’t need more converts quite as badly anymore.
This goes against basically every corporate strategy ever, which is to always increase growth.
At this state in the company's life there is a disconnect between those who make the software and those who make the business decisions.
I don't think it's likely that Apple's board just decided to give up attracting new customers, and any apparent decline in quality is likely attributed to bad management; ineptitude, rather than purpose.
Old school corps - DEC, HP, even IBM to an extent - weren't about increasing growth irrespective of consequences.
The DEC Employee Handbook made a big deal out of Doing the Right Thing. Obviously that was subjective, frequently debatable, and sometimes just a pain in the ass - but it was a guiding principle for engineers of that generation, and for engineers who became managers.
And it produced some outstanding engineering and innovation.
Because it actually means "Do the best work you can, for your own self-respect, and also because you respect your users."
That's light years away from "Screw as much money out of your customers as you can, as many overtime hours out of your developers as you can, and if the product is broken - who cares if the money keeps coming in?"
Increase growth, yes, but not at any cost. My point is that Apple may have decided that at this time they don’t need the growth as much as they need internal developers to work on other things than macOS.
