There is one clear difference between past releases and current releases which would mean you and the complainers could both be right: the length of the release

There is one clear difference between past releases and current releases which would mean you and the complainers could both be right: the length of the release cycle. Starting with Mountain Lion, Apple committed itself to a yearly release cycle for macOS. Prior to this the releases would generally take about 2 years. Now, if we take your premise that macOS releases today are no buggier than old releases, given the above it still results in people living with buggier releases, since we’ve removed a year of living under a stable OS. By the time the OS has shipped its .5 version and become rock solid, it’s just about time to upgrade yet again. The deal used to be that every other year you’d go through a few months of bug-time in exchange for new features, but this has now been compressed to be that every year you have to go through this process, which I personally find exhausting. This also effectively means that it’s harder to be the kind of person that waits for the bugs to be ironed out before upgrading because by the time the current OS feels good, the beta for the next OS is literally already out and it’s clear most of the work is being directed there. This is the camp I’m personally in right now. I was waiting for High Sierra to calm down (given the particularly tumultuous security issues it had), but it’s now looking like I’ll just be skipping it altogether (this will be the first version of macOS I’ll skip).