> Linux desktop is great now because OSes have stagnated and its easier to catch up.

The Linux desktop was fine, arguably since GTK2 was popularized. The software selection was a little sparse, but I genuinely liked it more than the Aqua UI at the time. (as well as... whatever Windows 7 was doing. Aero?)

> Mac was as good in 2010, 10 years ago. I do believe that its at least partly because Apple had the money to hire and support excellent teams full of brilliant people.

Maybe so, but I seldom really saw it pay off. Things definitely looked prettier on MacOS, but I was often frustrated by things that should "just work" like Time Machine and Safari, so I really spent the majority of my time on MacOS looking for alternatives to Apple's own software. Whatever lead they had in 2010 has been greatly diminished though, especially since Big Sur's release. I just can't even fathom using their new UI...

> Anyways, if money is a problem then just work for free lol.

I suppose I do, if you count open source contributions.

>Why do you care about Vulkan on Apple anyways?

It's nice. DXVK is very powerful, and not being able to use it on my Macbook kinda makes it a no-go for regular use. You can argue that it "doesn't matter" and try to trivialize my desires as much as you want, but it's Apple's move. My Windows machines had it, my Linux devices have it, Apple is the only one left who doesn't.

> Seems like you were a Mac user.. if i had to guess you used Mac for many years and switched recently, now that Linux desktop has become viable.

I used to use Windows for gaming and my Mac for programming, but once Proton got good enough I figured it was time to retire them both. Windows and MacOS were starting to get too slow to daily-drive, and my Mac wouldn't even run Mojave without idling above 50c. Plus, Apple's software quality has taken a complete nosedive in recent years. Sierra was the first step in a pretty questionable direction, and everything running Catalina and beyond is completely foreign to me. Plus, the little things like package management and process handling started to get increasingly difficult, to the point that it was actively making it harder for me to do my job. Safari's endless popup notifications drove me up the wall while I was happily using Chrome, and having to blow hundreds of gigs just to use little utilities like Xcode finally pushed me over the edge. I couldn't buy a machine with upgradable memory or even accessible storage. Modern Macs are about as repairable as a cellphone, which I find abhorrent.

> Why did you not use linux 10 years ago too?

I did, I've had an x201 for about a decade that's happily served as a media server and a Nextcloud/Syncthing host for quite a while now. On desktop, it was mostly down to a lack of software: there was a period where you couldn't run everything you wanted unless you had both Windows and Mac, but nowadays the holdouts have mostly given up. I've got Slack, VS Code, Discord, Steam, Spotify, and pretty much anything from Windows that I really cared about like Ableton Live. Plus, I can plug in any GPU that I want and expect it to work fairly well on Linux, which is definitely not the case for MacOS. Really not ideal for the times that I'm playing with AI or CUDA acceleration. Running Linux virtualized was a pretty good solution for a while, but with QEMU I can run Windows and MacOS with baremetal performance.

This isn't intended to dunk on MacOS, as much as it might seem like it (and as much as people insist that I do). I still think Mojave is one of the best OSes you can use these days, especially if you're not an enthusiast. My demands outgrew MacOS though, and Apple's demands offended me. Switching to Linux made perfect sense for my workflow, and it went smoother than I expected on the desktop. My overall point is that money is nice, but it won't buy you software freedom. You could have all the money in the world, and Apple wouldn't let you audit their source code or plug in an Nvidia graphics card. Instead of fighting them at every corner, I've given up, and I'm happier than I've ever been.