This design seems to cement the trend at Apple to position their products as consumer appliances, not platforms useful for development.
The problem is, there's nothing else out there. Everything is going to shit in one way or another. Windows is now a disaster, Linux was always a disaster in terms of user experience and isn't improving.
Mac OS was the last bastion of somewhat good, thoughtful design, user experience and attention to detail and now they've gone to shit too.
Nonsense, 'Linux' can be what you make it. You can have it as sleek as something straight out of the fruit factory or as spartan as a VT100 and anything in between. If you're new to the game the pre-packaged 'consumer' distributions might be a good starting point but for those with a bit of nix savvy - of which I assume there to be many on this board - those bells and whistles probably just get in the way.
If my 8yo daughter and my 82yo mother can use Linux - the latter through a remote X2go session from her kitchen table in the Netherlands to my server under the stairs in Sweden - I'd say people around here can be assumed to be able to handle it. The nice thing about 'Linux' is that you can change out those parts which you find disagreeable for whatever reason for those you like better, this in contrast to that last bastion of somewhat good, thoughtful design, user experience and attention to detail* which by your own statement has been changed into excrement. Just take out the shitty bits and replace them with something better... oh, no, not possible...
That is why the parent poster is right in this sense, things in 'Linux' land might not be perfect - and can never be 'perfect' since one person's perfection is another's nightmare - but at least you get to do something about it.