Linux distros have shot themselves in the foot plenty of times too. I was using Ubuntu when they rolled out the Unity update.
What do you mean by macOS being rented? It's been the same for about a decade, still not forcing me to update like Windows does on my spare PC running Win10 (well did until I told Claude to rip that out lol). And yeah Win11 is terrible, not even an option.
And Windows is an even bigger boat where everyone had ample time to jump ship if they wanted, like Win10 is still de facto supported and Win7 had support for a very long time.
Yep, exact reason (among quite a few others, but one of the primary ones) myself and so many other devs I know ultimately quit desktop Linux. It’s such a bad experience to not have one single reproducible, standardized option that the entire industry supports like Mac or windows. Check out the stackoverflow survey, which reflects it as well. Hell, I spent many years at Red Hat and probably 50% of devs and technical staff are running Mac’s for their work machines for that exact reason, and they all prefer it despite working at the most notable Linux company. They don’t care either, since RH makes virtually zero money off of desktop Linux.
The problem isn't when adopting a closed platform, but when people start expecting it to respect their preferences. It's always a matter of time for the experience to degrade little by little with no option to run to.
This is to say, we should use the tools that get the job done, but always be vigilant with coupling to any vendor, but specially proprietary ones.