You are getting triggered by GP. And ironically, you are doing exactly what GP was doing but against Apple.

>Windows has had its regressive moments, but overall it's consistently been more usable than anything on the market. 95 was a joy, 98 was a joy, XP was a joy, Vista was bad, 7 was a joy, 8 was bad, 10 is amazing. Compare that to MacOS* which only started competing with OSX and peaked at 10.5 (Leopard) and has been basically going slowly downhill since, with regressive behaviors,

What you said about Windows is also true about macOS. There have been some regressive behaviours in the recent past but overall macOS is no more inconsistent than Windows 10. You might quickly point out about "plain text passwords" in macOS but if you look at the macro scale, Apple screws up not much more than Google or Microsoft or Amazon etc. Amazon has fat fingered systems shutting down half of the internet. Microsoft has managed to create updated which wipe out users data or fail spectacularly on certain popular SSDs. If you want to really roast companies on "regression in software", the whole of silicon valley will fall like a house of cards.

>hostility to anyone that doesn't want to live in their walled garden,

Not true. macOS is very permissive otherwise things like Little Snitch, Alfred won't exist. You cannot compare with iOS because Microsoft no longer has a competing product.

>hostility to legacy software (many Windows XP programs still run perfectly with explicit compatibility settings,

Different design philosophy doesn't mean it's wrong or hostile. By that same metric, Linux can't be arsed to give a stable ABI. Windows gives a damn about legacy, Apple doesn't and Linux is some whole another shit. And why is this really a problem in macOS? Most of the devs upgrade software to run on latest OS and really don't have problems.

>meanwhile OSX barely supports apps that are built for 3 major releases back-- that's only 3 years of support)

Exaggeration. A lot of stuff from Snow Leopard days still work on High Sierra. Most apps still have support from the time of Mavericks. 5-8 years is a long time in technology and is a very reasonable balance between future of software and past compatibility. And honestly where does the line end? If you want legacy, why don't you ask Microsoft to support software from the 80s out of the box?

>deprecation/removal of core OS APIs with zero intention to replace them

Examples? Only profound one, which directly impacts user that I can think of, is the changes in PDF handling in preview.

>Try developing on a platform that competes against its own developer community and keeps APIs private for competitive advantage

Every company does? Google, Amazon, Microsoft? Google and Microsoft have their own set of productivity apps for platforms just like Apple? They are also closed source, have private APIs which only they have access to.

>Try developing on a platform that strong-arms you into paying yearly fees just so you can deploy applications that work out of the box on client machines.

Not on macOS. Again, iOS is not the point of comparison. Compared to Windows, macOS is no more restrictive. Tons of developers sell mac software using fastspring and deploy updates using Sparkle framework - thus completely bypassing the mac app store.

>Comparatively, Apple has been much more hostile to developer communities than Microsoft ever has.

I don't think so. Apple may not be very proactive compared to Microsoft and Google AND it may not be as permissive as the former but calling them as "hostile" is too strong of a word.

IRONICALLY, you are railing against Apple on pretty much the same logic as GP was railing against Microsoft.