I disagree that macOS is being “dumbed down”. Unfortunately, the days of easy access to system volumes, kernel extensions had to end because the internet isn’t

I disagree that macOS is being “dumbed down”. Unfortunately, the days of easy access to system volumes, kernel extensions had to end because the internet isn’t a friendly place and we just can’t have nice things. I spend more time on the command line now than I did 10 years ago on macOS and I don’t see that changing any time soon. It’s been a three release arc, starting with Catalina, to Big Sur and now Monterey, that started off pretty rocky and seemingly coming to fruition with this release. I’m using the public beta of Monterey as my daily driver and the transition couldn’t have gone any smoother, especially given it’s still months away from being released. So much better than Catalina which was ridiculously bad two years ago. I also don’t agree this is the lowest common denominator; since iPadOS, iOS and macOS all have the same core operating system, it only makes sense there should be a baseline of functionality and that users are able to use the appropriate platform for a given task. But that doesn’t mean unfettered access to everything on the Mac; given the world we live in, that’s a a recipe for disaster, which is why we can’t have nice things.