I don't think you're the kind of user I had in mind; I was thinking more of non-technical people who know their way around their phone and enough Windows to use

I don't think you're the kind of user I had in mind; I was thinking more of non-technical people who know their way around their phone and enough Windows to use Excel and Word on Windows on their work PC that IT admins and locks down completely. Like, people who take those training sessions for switching the new Microsoft Office version and profit from them, or maybe they don't need those, but have zero experience at admin tasks. I guess those would make up a very large part of Apple customers. On a new Catalina install, you'd have a hard time to not find crucial apps easily, like Safari, Mail, Calendar, something to write a letter in ... because they are in the Dock already, or prominently in LaunchPad, which works just like the home screen on a phone, and is in the Dock in the leftmost position – and the OS has an onboarding flow that pops up right away and that'll take care of explaining those things. So, if you, as someone with little expertise in IT, open that new Macbook Air, chances are you'll find your way around quite well with the tools you have. The weird @ placement will keep being an annoyance though. Chances are you know how to use the Preferences app on your phone, and you'll probably be able to figure out the System Preferences app in LaunchPad with that knowledge, and it can do everything important. Pretty big deal! If you need a terminal, you're way way way ahead those people in terms of computer literacy and certainly wouldn't have any serious problems navigating any sensible operating system there is, just some annoyance if it doesn't work like (I assume) the Linux setup you've spent a lot of time dialing in perfectly. Most people wouldn't know that their animations aren't ideal for them the same way I couldn't tell if a certain dentist's drill had somewhat less than ideal ergonomics for a cavity in a specific place. And besides (n=1) I've been using Macs all day for way over a decade and I never found any issues with the animations; maybe I'm part of the majority and that's why people aren't very vocal about the OS animations. If I extrapolate from my experiences (which are numerous pieces of anecdata, but of course still anecdata), there is a significant number of people who use Macs because they want something stylish and pretty that is easy to use for "casual" computing needs and is fairly frustration-free. If something is wrong, you dig through preferences some and there'll be a radio button to change that. If that projector is at native 4K, you open System Preferences, Displays, click on the icon that has the largest font – that'll do it. And it's built with the knowledge that most users will not be able to do much more than that – so having to resort to a shell and fixing up config files based on a forum post from 2012 isn't going to happen – they'll turn up at the Genius Bar and will be disgruntled customers if the people there can't help. So, if Linux is to be the new Mac, it'll need to offer that kind of experience as well. Currently, in my experience, it doesn't offer this at all.