Well, everyone is going to have their own perceptions, and maybe some end users do see it as a continuous evolution. For me personally, I saw a discontinuity i

Well, everyone is going to have their own perceptions, and maybe some end users do see it as a continuous evolution. For me personally, I saw a discontinuity in the 2010s where suddenly the platform was becoming very locked down: features like SIP prevented you from modifying anything that was part of the OS (though you could turn it off) and code signing appeared to be the first step toward preventing end users from executing any program not blessed by Apple. There was a while in the late 2010s where many of us were pretty sure that Apple was on the verge of prohibiting users from running any code they wrote themselves. There would be some kind of byzantine approval process like for iOS that would reject random, personal utilities not useful to anyone besides the author. Apple kept denying this was their plan, but kept moving closer and closer to doing this. However, they then appeared to stop around 2020 and haven't renewed those efforts, so I guess we are safe?