I've been using Macs since Mac OS 9, and Snow Leopard was indeed very good. It remains my favorite version of Mac OS. I actually think it was Snow Leopard that started the rush of developers to Mac as _the_ platform to use.
People don't want animojis, and they don't want other trite new features that only seem to exist because Apple feels it needs to demo something new every year.
What they want is something that just works without annoyances, distractions, failures, or complications.
Give them that and they'll break down the doors trying to get their hands on it, because it's so far from how most tech works today.
Yeah and they succeeded in that so now it's about selling subscriptions on top of that.