> Why does the alt tab equivalent cycle through applications first
I've always preferred this to Windows' approach; as soon as I have more than dozen open windows I find it very difficult to find what I need on Windows, whereas with macOS there's an extra layer of hierarchy to speed up the search. They really could add it as an option though, you shouldn't need a third-party app for this.
> I attach a non Mac external monitor to a new MacBook Pro from work and the text is super blurry
No idea what the virtual display thing is, and the issue may be the EDID thing that another commenter mentioned, but macOS' handling of "non-retina" screen resolution is absolute ass since they removed subpixel antialiasing a few versions back. You can still disable the gross "font smoothing" via a terminal command which helps a little, but since subpixel AA was removed, text on "low resolution" displays -- i.e. sub 150ppi -- looks like shit compared to Windows.
Compared with the rather primitive way macOS handles UI scaling, the almost total lack of available > 4K displays for > 21.5" screen sizes to suit said scaling, and the fact that a good number of their most popular computers still ship with a non-integer scaling mode by default, getting an optimal image from a Mac is far more difficult than it should be. I know it's all good enough that most people don't care, but this is supposed to be the company where "good enough" isn't enough.
> Why is there 2 modes of "full-size" windows? Regular style "fill the window", then another wierd one that sort of takes over the whole screen
The "take-over" one was added during the peak of the iPhone and iPad exploding in popularity, when Apple was copying many iOS features back to the Mac. I don't begrudge it being there (my wife uses it almost exclusively for some reason), but I do wish I could switch the default behavior. I strongly dislike the notion that windows should be full-screen unless sharing with another app -- I prefer windows to be the size of their content, which is what the green button on macOS used to do (and still does, if you Option-click it). Windows makes this annoyingly difficult, though the new expanded snapping options in Windows 11 are very nice.
> Why does finder sometimes open in a sub folder as the "top level", then it's a total pain to move up to where you want
I've always found Finder to be the worst part of the Mac. Who knows why it does what it does. What determines the default window size? Why is it always far too small? We may never know.
> Why are 3rd party applications distributed as Disk Images? Then some as package installers? It's weird and nonsensical.
.app bundles are actually directories with metadata to make macOS treat them like files, so they can't be shared as-is. Sometimes you get them in plain zips, but I think the .dmg thing is a holdover from classic Mac OS. .pkg installers are usually used when the app needs to install extra stuff outside its bundle -- just like how sometimes Windows programs are an .exe and sometimes they're an .msi.
I love macOS as a platform, but I completely agree with everything the person is saying in the linked Twitter thread. No-one at Apple seems to be equipped to steward the platform anymore, so the software decays even while the hardware is going through a renaissance.
Unfortunately, the investment that is being put into it is largely to give application parity with new features they add to iOS. Things are superficially changed every year (often for the worse), but the actual base OS doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of features or improvements. Why do I need a third-party app to get reasonable window management? Why do I need two third-party apps to make a mouse usable (one to make the side buttons work, another to fix the scroll momentum and have a separate scroll direction to the trackpad)? Why do I need a third-party app to get a calendar in the menu bar? Why do I still get yelled at for yanking an idle USB stick without ejecting it first?
That turned into for more of a rant than I intended.