Do you not use a desktop environment? Loads of software is being made (and I only know the macOS side of it). Window managers, compression tools, utilities, powerhouse tools like Photoshop, text editors, IDEs, etc. I myself build software in this space and generally its productivity-ish-tools. Here's a list of 70 macOS apps that received updates _today_ https://macupdater.com/app_updates/index-2025-01-27.html
I do use a desktop environment. I don't use many additional productivity tools, though, and that is likely why I have a blind spot about that part of the software market. My question was more geared towards the seeming lack of a robust software ecosystem (i.e., there appears to be at most one leading product in each category, with one or two alternatives), to whit: - there's Xcode/VSCode. - Photoshop/GIMP. - Sublime…
> Photoshop/GIMP And Affinity, and Pixelmator. Gimp is not in the same league.
For high quality software, it would be strange to have more than a leading product and a couple of alternatives, wouldn't it? Like, what would be the kind of customer who would not be satisfied with neither PhotoShop or Affinity nor Pixelmator?