No one will ever convince me that the Mac approach for installing programs is intuitive or good UX. The whole argument of: "But if you think about it in ... way, it makes sense" is a terrible argument.
MacOS experience is t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e and it's getting worse on each release.
People who like macOS experience for me either suffer from Stockholm syndrome, or nostalgia about lost macOS 9 base. Or simply have no idea there's something better!
macOS today is not macOS at all; it's a rebranded NeXT computer.
It's generally insane. They have mocked Windows in the Vista era for bringing UAC, but now they're much, much worse.
Their file security API breaks auto-updates of popular applications. AV vendors have to use an API that forces to block access to new files and release it "at unspecified time in the future".
Installing an average application on macOS generates so much notifications that user doesn't even see them anymore. It's like ads on a commercial TV channel, nobody wants this info, but it's being served over and over again.
Developer experience is dreadful. It's "our way, or the highway". Setting up a CI worker box on macOS is something I wouldn't wish for my enemy.
A good eye opening excersise of how much macOS gets in the way is to install sshfs.
Don't tell me desktop linux. It's not fit for purpose and doesn't run the software I need it to run. I do not want to run Linux. I, frankly, do not like what Linux evolved into. The desktop linux of 15 years ago was sort of acceptable. Modern systems infected with pulseaudio, systemd, and whatever the fuck gnome and kde have turned into are not. I'd rather run Windows, and I hate Windows.
Also I think you're cargo culting. You have problems with existence of systemd while praising an OS that doesn't even allow you to disable transition animation delays when changing virtual screens. It's not logical.
Btw, pulseaudio is old news, now it's pipewire.
I'm using linux-native software all the time, that has no equivalents in other systems.
Ultimately though, package managers (whether it's apt, dnf, Steam, some app store, etc) are the best for most people, myself included.
* From a windows CLI type
SET* From a windows CLI type
SET APP* With path location variables, open up file explorer and enter %appdata% in address bar and press enter / click "goto" arrow. File Explorer will expand the variable and show the expanded directory path and contents.
It's only the program that is used to browse is different.
It's like you don't use explorer but regedit. It's the only difference.
On macOS it's not like you can always type what's inside the plist files with a text editor, sometimes you need to use 'plutil' anyway (if a plist is binary). So to browse Application Support you still often need thirdparty software anyway.
Years ago I did a small project that mapped windows hive (registry) files as a filesystem through fuse on linux. It mapped to a filesystem concept nearly flawlessly.
edit: can't reply anymore for today ('posting too fast'), so i just reply here: What is a file if not a key/value entry in a directory? Anyway, you can put custom binary data in registry, one value type is just "binary". But you shouldn't! Just like in Application Support - you can but you shouldn't. Registry just enforces it more. Entering regedit also requires to elevate it if you want to change system settings (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE). Changing user settings doesn't need elevation (HKEY_CURRENT_USER).
Also, Mac plists have two formats, xml and the non-text kind. Now mentioning that, I kinda hate both formats.
The closest analogue to the registry on macOS are the ~/Library/Preferences and /Library/Preferences folders.