Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like people have ALWAYS had problems when upgrading MacOS (or OSX). However, those problems aren't with the OS itself usually, but 3rd party software that lags. For that reason I always intentionally lag 1 major version behind. I'll upgrade to Ventura whenever the next version is released. Been doing this forever and can't recommend it highly enough.
I don't entirely think it's just 3rd party software, I think Apple's decision to bundle major app and OS updates together gives people the illusion that every major release is causing problems. If they were to separate their first party app updates and OS updates (release wise, they can still market them together), more people would be able to pinpoint "ok it's not the entire update since I was on it just fine for a…
While holding back app updates to stabilize the early upgrade experience might work, it's also somewhat contradictory to the idea that they upgraded the apps and their features and upgraded the OS as necessary to support the apps and features.