Are there no quality Windows apps?
I also suspect it's because the demographic of Mac users are generally richer and more likely to pay for software
In fact, many developers just don't bother any more and build only for iOS. The users are generally willing to pay for quality apps, and that's sadly rarely the case with Android.
During that time people got used to alternate sources for .apks and they didn't move back. Most likely they converted other people too.
I would argue that iOS is easier to develop for if you're prepared to learn Apple's dev tools. The hardware available is locked down so you can more easily design for all cases, and there's a good bunch of core frameworks covering a lot of functionality
My guess is that:
- there are fewer people building these PC apps, more people instead buildings apps for mobile
- the big well established programs, both commercial and open source get more and more features over time, so there is less need for specialized apps.
- people are less trusting of downloaded PC executables built by random people.
- google search makes it harder to find them, instead showing you what I assume to be auto-generated pages of lists and other SEO spam
- a steady trend of moving away from you having control over your own computer and software towards the centralized models where you basically run a client with only the amount of control they feel like giving you, plus subscription fees, so so many subscription fees.
My personal theory is that 2D grid calendars themselves are not a good fit for fluid computing in the way it has developed. The best calendars of that sort offer allowances toward a hybrid conceptual/emotional workspace and thus are not especially informationally valuable especially next to list/agenda formats.
This is hand-wavvy though because I still think they are valuable digitally here and there.
For this reason I'll just offer at a stretch that it may be worth exploring art and design software, particularly if it allows you to do some scripting...no guarantees that will even sound interesting though. When people can't find a thing in a forest of things, that's often a cue that the journey needs to turn inward first, toward e.g. subjective specification
FWIW, I have a completely reversed experience. On Windows you have multitude of free, "gets the jobs done" tools like the built-in tool, Greenshot, Lightshot, and of course the best one - ShareX.
On Mac, I looked and couldn't find anything free. Eventually I settled on Shottr which is decent enough for me.
Because on Windows it is? It's a deterioration in the user experience when you move from a platform that has all the bells and whistles to one where each bell is a paid-for subscription that you have to buy.
The screenshot tools built in to macos are fairly decent, so you don't need to pay extra to get screenshots and screen recordings.
Shift + Command + 3 : Whole screenshot
Shift + Command + 4 : Selected area/windowed screenshot
Shift + Command + 5 : All screenshot options, include screen recording.
I was always surprised windows users had to get a third party tool
ShareX and greenshot.
Everyone writes bloated code now. XCode and .Net are used. Most people and businesses don't seem to care. We used to write in Assembly and C/C++ in CLI mode that was fast. Before the GUI, command line programs ran faster. Which is why some people like FreeDOS and DOS machines like JRR Martin and his Wordstar word processor.
Your argument comes across as anti progress and pro 'old thing'.
It's not profitable enough: it takes time to develop and the majority of users claim its outdated the minute you release because it doesn't take 5 seconds to start up, doesn't use up 5x as much as as needed and isn't using whatever the latest craze in design is.
I wrote a task management app using Lazarus+C in 2018: starts up in under 30ms, keeps all your data local (with option to sync to a owncloud instance). It was low on features because ... MVP.
After critically analysing it, and checking user reactions with a select group of non-techie friends, I just gave up on it (don't even have the sources anymore).
All that the non-techie users focused on was the fact that "It looks so primitive, like Windows Seven / Vista".
No one cared that they go from double-click on the icon to ready-to-use faster than they could blink. "Instant startup" is a great feature for some, but not the majority.
No one cared that, other than (optionally, and manually-initiated) syncing there was never a "busy" icon. "Everything instant" is a feature no one cared about.
No one cared that it kept the data private, their details private, etc. In fact, many were surprised when I pointed that out as a feature.
No one cared when I pointed out that they could bind a global shortcut key to it so that, even while busy typing in a Word document, or a web-form, they can bring it uo, add a task, and return to the task at hand without ever once needing to hit the mouse. This isn't an important feature for users. They are fully prepared to treat the desktop as a single-application-at-a-time machine.
User's don't want features, they want benefits, and one of the most important benefits to users is having the same look-and-feel as all the web apps. Another benefit is having it hosted somewhere that they can easily share with friends. If their friends don't download your app to use locally, then the user using your app can't easily share the usage of the app with friends.
A benefit to webapps is that the friction to onboard collaborators is next to nothing - all the user has to do when given a link to a tasklist from a friend is simply click "sign up"[2].
I mean, even you placed form over function, using the end of your second sentence to specify what the look and feel should not be[1]. Does it really matter if the widgets look like older WxWidgets, previous versions of Qt or widgets from Windows Seven?
So it's not as if the developers are forcing this onto the users, it's simply that the users voted with their feet.
I hate it as much as you do, but you only swim against the tide if you're an actual submarine.
[1] And, you specified a look and feel that has no correlation to usability.
[2] And that's only if they want to edit it; reading could be account-less.