It's not really a three way war, it's a war between Android and Apple. Occasionally Microsoft pops up and gets mostly ignored. How many times have they started from scratch on their mobile OS?
I feel like I have handcuffs on when I use iOS devices. Apple makes too many decisions for me and doesn't give me an option to do otherwise. I like being able to install games I bought from the Humble Bundle on my phone.
As a Linux guy I find KDE Connect to be more powerful and even simpler than Airdrop/Bonjour.
I do have my own video editing story with Apple/Windows 10.
The company I used to work at had a $10,000 Mac Pro up in the studio - for editing video.
The guy in the digital department also wanted to edit some video for his department, but unlike the studio couldn't justify a budget for that kind of a Mac. He asked for a $4,000 Mac and got denied.
I proposed building him a gaming system and got a $1,500 budget to do it with. This was right before Ryzen came out, so I built him an 8 core AMD Bulldozer based system with a GeForce 1070 and 32GB of RAM along with Windows 10. OS and software was on a 512GB SSD, I setup the \users directory to be on a 1GB hybrid drive.
It outperformed the $10,000 Mac Pro in most tasks. Sure it didn't have Thunderbolt, then again the Mac Pro didn't have PCIe slots. This particular user was not the typical creative, he was an actual digital guy who cared about performance and functionality over labels and perception. He loved it. Most of my users wouldn't have traded a CoreDuo iMac with CS4 for that system I built if it meant they weren't going to be using a Mac anymore. I consider those users to be handicapped.
Little known fact - Adobe and Apple have been at war for over a decade. Adobe intentionally makes their products work better on Windows than Mac now, but they know better than to cut-off Apple due to the ingrained mindsets of the existing field. That's why most of their modern how-to videos are done on Windows machines, they're trying to nudge people over.
Pure Android is great - I pit it against Apple in interface comparisons. Unfortunately the carriers and handset makers ruin Android. If you have a Nexus/Pixel type device with true Android on it, it's great, the manufacturers and carriers like to ruin their phones otherwise.
The things you like most about Apple are the things they annoy me most about Apple. You summed it up with "if they also have a Mac" - I see their lack of cross platform compatibility with their native stuff annoys me.
That being said - I've used Macs extensively and liked it.
I don't use a Mac like a Mac user does.
I use the same cross-platform things on a Mac that I do on Linux or Windows for the most part. I use the same browsers obviously, I used to use a drop-down terminal just like I do on Linux and Windows, until that got broken due to interface changes. I use Clementine for music, I use VLC for video, I command-line the hell out of everything. I use Free File Sync, Sync Thing, Handbrake, MakeMKV - basically if it's what I use with KDE Neon I try to use it on a Mac also. I find avoiding actual Apple programs to be the safest thing to do if I want to work with anyone not on the plantation.
The end result is I can move between Linux, Mac and Windows nearly seamlessly.
Very detailed answer!
So I can understand 100% where you are coming from. Like I mentioned in the video, I really don't think Macs are superior devices in any way. It's interesting that what I enjoy most you find most annoying. And I can understand that. In an ideal world, we want companies to give us cross compatibility. That's exactly what Nadella started doing when he presumed his position at Microsoft. However, Apple has never been known to play nice with others.
The thing is, for me it's all about ease of work. Apple makes my productivity 500 times better because of the ability to transfer files back and forth to and from devices, answer my messages and calls from my phone, laptop, or even watch. The experience across the devices is seamless, and is there right out of the box. You mentioned KDE. I can't even speak on that because I haven't touched Linux in years. However when I was fooling around with Linux, it wasn't exactly an easy process to get everything set up. That was years ago though, times may have changed.
Ultimately I get why some people don't like Apple. It makes perfect sense. The truth is, they kind of monopolize their way into things. In terms of performance, yes Adobe performs very well on Windows. However FCPX (something ironically I don't use) slams Adobe Premiere in all aspects. So take that for what it's worth.
Sounds like you have some dev background. I could be wrong. And as a former hobbyist programer, I wouldn't touch Mac with a stick. My needs are completely different these days though.
Thanks for watching man!
I'm actually not "a dev". You're forgiven for making that assumption, my software developer friends can't believe I'm not actually one of them and they still ask me for suggestions and help, and occasionally I have some. I never really learned a programming language, back in junior high I learned enough basic to do something with it, which I have mostly forgotten, just recently I made a point of trying to learn python with some teach your kids to code books. I was pretty good at HTML 3 and even wrote CSS by hand when it was new and I had time to fool with it. I'm not completely ignorant of programming, I wrote some pretty complex .bat files back in the day, I wrote Netware login scripts, I even wrote branching menu console stuff for DOS and Netware and these days I tend to write shell scripts - the most basic of programming.
I've done manufacturing, I'm well versed in logic (which is a form of programming - just not the standard compiled code kind), I've worked in automation (and am working in it again to a limited degree), I've been a sysadmin, I've done space to ground communications, worked for a dial-up ISP back in the day, I can work cable - copper, fiber, Coax, TwinAx - milspec cable most people have never heard of. I supported networking all the way from switching serial networks the space shuttle had all over the Mission Control Center, to 10-Base-2 to Cat6A, single mode fiber, multimode fiber, K-Band, S-Band...... Right now I'm working on toll roads.
Honestly a lot of my dislike for Apple's way of doing things - even though I actually like their workstations and OS outside of their utilities, comes from cutting my teeth on Netware. I loved Novell back in the day - I could connect a DOS machine, a Mac, and a WIndows machine to the same server, using the same printers and it worked beautifully. Considering the small size of the hard drives back then I could do a "network install" of the Corel Office Suite and even computers that didn't have enough hard-drive space to install the program could run the whole suite due to the Novell server hosting the files.
Linux is in a strange place where simplicity is concerned these days.
If you run a desktop distro that is meant to be a desktop distro like KDE Neon or - despite the fact I really don't like Gnome/Cinnamon I give them credit for it as well - it's easier than Windows or Mac if you stick with what the distro offers. This means mostly sticking to software that has the distro logo/star/whatever in Synaptic.
I say this because using a web browser isn't any different one OS to the next. I honestly think Libre Office is easier to use than MS Office (I'm leaving the Apple utilities out of this equation since we removed them from user systems and fought against their use for compatibility reasons I have little experience doing anything but fighting them). The only thing you have to do in the Linux world if you're a normal desktop user AND you have compatible hardware that doesn't need extra work is select the software you want and hit install in your package manager. I like Synaptic, but there's even simpler, more basic ones aimed about desktop users. As long as you're happy with what is offered by your distro - and a normal desktop web-browsing user should be - it's the easiest thing around other than a Chrome Book.
Once you have to install a driver that isn't GPL and isn't included with your distro or want to install software that isn't in your distro all bets are off. It's better than it was. If you can get a .deb, an .rpm, or a well behaving .sh file depending on what you're using it's arguably as easy as Windows or Mac - as long as all the dependencies are available. So as a basic office/web machine it's the easiest thing around outside of Chrome OS, and there are Chrome OS derived distros that close that gap a little.
I'm not in denial - the likelihood of needing an Intel WiFi driver, and nVIdia video driver or other non-GPL driver is pretty high. I realize that even though it works great people are going to want their Spotify. Spotify works on Linux, but isn't quite as easy as Mac/Windows. My own grandma used Linux just fine for a while - but the stupid Facebook and Wild Tangent anchored games that infest her system with spyware she likes so much don't work on Linux so I have to keep her on Windows. Take from that what you will. It's worth checking out again if you haven't played with it in years. Yes, I recommend starting with KDE Neon since I like it so much.
Now that I'm looking over this I wish I could edit. I've been a tech for too long. When I typed "I setup the \users directory to be on a 1GB hybrid drive" it looked alright to me. During the time I've been doing this what was good did move from 1GB to 1TB. I put in a 1 TB hybrid drive (budget reasons, I wanted to go bigger but that did the job). When I first started doing what I do for a living 2MB or RAM and a 500 MB HDD wasn't uncommon for customer machines. I was BEGGING people to not skimp on the RAM - it was the one thing they had a difficult time quantifying in their purchase. The just thought "faster". I had difficulty explaining that. Now I'm going down a rabbit trail - consider my correction submitted.