FWIW the amount of time I've spent fiddling with my OS in the last year approaches zero, and I don't remember it being this unintrusive when I was using Windows

FWIW the amount of time I've spent fiddling with my OS in the last year approaches zero, and I don't remember it being this unintrusive when I was using Windows or macOS at work. Nothing just works quite like something that simply hasn't changed. In the amount of time I used to spend in a month making sure macOS wasn't on the brink; a couple weeks ago I investigated and implemented a feature in a system component, one that is not present on any commercially available desktop operating system. Now my input method client displays language-appropriate glyph variants based on the input method's locale, and you just managed to get the App Store to shut up, or fix some of your homebrew after a system upgrade.