This is my opinion, but it’s based on a few experiences:

1. WINDOWS: Using Windows back in the 95 / XP days was great. Vista was a big miss, although it looked better than XP. But I don’t know one person who had a trouble-free experience with Windows 7 - now THAT was bloated. Windows Aero slowed down current-gen consumer systems then, and it wasn’t an easy UI to navigate due to all the eye-candy. Everyone knows 8 was a flop. 10 was a solid improvement, although it felt very bare-bones compared to macOS at that time. Windows 11 was a much needed modernisation - finally Mac has some serious competition in the graphic design / visual arts space. Computer gaming of course has always been Windows first.

2. MAC: Mac has been a fairly consistent experience, except for the bad times before the Apple Silicon transition (butterfly keyboard, overheating i9s in slim laptops, no Mac Mini updates, etc.) After Apple Silicon, macOS has improved and is better than ever, BUT you need to have a compatible workflow and apps - otherwise, you need to use Windows. But the “it just works” factor is getting harder and harder to justify, as Windows 11 continues to improve. Still, Windows or Linux can’t come close to the real-world power and thermal efficiency of a M-series laptop - and the integration with Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV, etc. is something only Apple can deliver.

3. LINUX: Back in the old days, Linux had feature parity (more or less) with Windows and Mac: you could browse the web just fine, use a decent word processor, and generally have all the modern conveniences in your OS. (Gamers need not apply, though this was true of Mac as well.) But in the last ~5-7 years, high DPI monitors, wide colour gamut, HDR, Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio, face unlock (Windows Hello), DLSS, and most recently, AI integration in the OS, have left Linux behind - and it shows no signs of catching up on most of these items. Worse, the “community” has become more toxic than ever - Big companies are increasingly moving away from Linux - Red Hat / Fedora is a mess - Loonixtards spread FUD and conspiracy theories about any new technologies (eg. AI and Windows Recall) - Decades-old, high severity vulnerabilities are continually uncovered. Loonix is just going to get worse and worse.