Aside from all the hardware that doesn't work.

That "which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want" is utterly superfluous.

The way I want to run my machine is by running macOS and using its features, app ecosystem, and so on.

Not once have I ever felt I've had to make a sacrifice to do so.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, my comments are in the context of the OP's article which is specifically about a scenario where you lack control in macOS. If you're someone who doesn't care about being able to do what the article wants to do, then your use case doesn't fall within the scope of what I'm referring to.

I have a life and plan to live it, not spend all day configuring my computer to do basic things that macOS does perfectly.

"I've never personally understood" seems to be a lack of imagination.

You did see that they mentioned the Studio Display as well, yes?

I did. But the Studio is also a 5K offering which has also been less specced. Perhaps more comparable but still "less for the same price". So, valid. But yes, I love the XDR, but I wouldn't hold it as a "maybe wait for the XDR 2" (and Studio Display 2) as an alternative to this.

Anybody sufficiently interested would press further, not back away.

If one actually tried to explain to a five year old, they can use things like analogy, simile, metaphor, and other forms of rhetoric. This was just a straight-up technical explanation.

Not everything has to be. Sometimes, an artist's style or a particular track just hits a particular vibe one may be after or need in a particular moment.

I'm not a fan of this music either but I could imagine hearing it while I'm studying or coding.

Don't trash something just because it's not your vibe. Not everything has to be Mozart.

You can say whatever you want, but pretentious sneering is annoying, don't be surprised if people push back.

You absolutely trashed it in your first sneering, shitty swipe about “culture”. You don’t get to make comments like that and then whine about “policing” like a four year-old caught in the cookie jar.

> There was never a period of time when you could just look at any logo and know what it is

None of your examples are for built-in applications. You have to go out of your way to download those programs. You'd know what the traffic cone means because you downloaded the program with the traffic cone. You went out of your way to get it.

Let's go back to that era and look at some other built-in apps, like Pages is (these days).

Notepad: a blue-covered notepad with some lined pages visible.

Wordpad: a fountain pen writing on some lined paper. Eventually the pen disappeared but the paper remained.

Paint: a paint palette, then a bucket of art supplies, then a glass cup with paintbrushes, then back to a palette but with a brush.

Solitaire: a deck of cards.

Outlook Express: an envelope.

MSN Messenger: two people next to each other because they're communicating with each other.

Windows Movie Maker: a film reel/strip.

Internet Explorer: a big 'e' (for Explorer) with a planet-like ring around it, suggesting a planet that you could traverse. (Okay, a bit abstract)

Over the Mac, there was:

SimpleText: a pencil writing on a sheet of paper. Later re-used for TextEdit.

Sherlock: a detective's cap and magnifying glass, indicating searching. The magnifying glass was later re-used for Spotlight.

Disk First Aid: A floppy disk on the back of an ambulance.

Disk Utility: a doctor's stethoscope pressed against a hard disk.

etc.

> it was not how comprehensible logos became, but how cynical we ended up

Because, on macOS, none of the icons became any more comprehensible than before. If anything, they got less comprehensive even when the visual metaphor remained the same because the representation is so poor. That's what made everybody cynical.

The first message in the thread isn't the definition of the actual feature.

What's the best way to disable all MacOS image processing background services?

There isn't any such service; it's on demand.

These macOS services appear to be related to image processing:

  photoanalysisd 
  mediaanalysisd
  com.apple.photos.backgroundAnalysisService

Faster and better, but in all its time, it's never gotten better than Alfred which, ironically, depends on the Spotlight index.