You're assuming a group who are generally aware of shortcut keys and utilize them. That's probably the minority.
Great example: Apple's bizarre and petty refusal to put a real Delete key on its laptop or non-full-sized keyboards. They only have a Backspace key, mislabeled "delete." This means that millions of users are arrowing (or moving the insertion point by hand) across the characters they want to delete and backspacing them away. Apple apologists will howl, NOOOO! Command-delete! As if any normal user (especially switching from another platform) would guess this. And yes, they would have to guess this, because it's not marked on the keyboard.
This became doubly inexcusable with the deprecation of the Eject key. It's not as if Apple could pretend that there was "no room" for a Delete key... not that they could anyway, since everyone else manages to provide one.
I don't think there's a wrong or a right way here, there's just what you're used to. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if I completely understand your complaint - I almost exclusively use Windows and I'm not really sure what the Delete key does but is just 'reverse backspace'? I never use it.
The Delete key deletes the character to the right of the insertion point; the Backspace key deletes the character to the left. You must be wasting a lot of keystrokes!
A Delete key also deletes stuff; like E-mails, files... any currently-selected item in most applications. I don't "backspace" E-mails or other objects to delete them.
Again, I don't think either is more inherently correct, there's just what you're used to.
If you do a lot of editing, and certainly programming, you quickly chafe at the lack of a Delete key. I've been using Karabiner on the Mac to remap F12 to be Delete, losing the Volume-up control in the process. Annoying, but worth it.
The exception to that equivalence is in text editing where it behaves like backspace. But macOS doesn't ignore the desire to delete text in the other direction. fn+delete will perform a forward character delete.
Looking at a Macbook keyboard, regardless of what label Apple puts on it, you can see that it's missing either a Backspace key or a Delete key.
Interesting that even Apple chose the D key for "delete" and the action is "forward-delete" and not Backspace, though.
Cmd-Delete deletes text to the beginning of the input line, Fn-Delete is forward delete. Also, what’s with the inflammatory language?
“Apple proponents love to smugly point …”
“Apple apologists will howl, NOOOO! Command-delete!”
So on the German Mac layout you are holding the Command key and pressing Q, closing the Application. The right input would be Option-L.