I wasn’t comparing in the way you think, I’m comparing in the sense that cohesion and important details aren’t usually a thing when it comes to the desktop Linux experience.
That is kind of what I said with ‘you’re probably comparing different things’. However, my experience is entirely different. I’ve been using Linux for quite a while now. While not everything is perfect, I think it does the job reasonably well. On my laptop all the applications I chose work quite well. I’m currently within the GNOME desktop (since you mentioned that) but I can’t really follow your woes. I’ve installed like 50 desktop applications, do development and stuff. And everything just works for me. I think they all apply the GTK theme I chose and most of them also honor the dark mode settings and tie into the system very well. I really can’t complain about that part of Linux. Additionally I have the command line where everything ties into another superbly. It follows the unix philosophy. That means I have tools that are supposed to do one task, but do that task well. And then I have a simple means of connecting them, concatenating them and it makes things really easy. I don’t know how Apple does stuff. I suppose you can also instruct it to find all the vacation pictures from 2021, transfer them to the external harddrive and then remove them from the laptop. Might be easier or more time consuming on a Mac. But it really shines if you do complex development stuff, prepare a complex development project, handle the dependencies, do automatic (unit and integration) tests and deploy it. Or stuff like that. I really can’t live without that convenience.
And which kind of cohesion on the desktop are you missing and I don’t? I mean sure, Apple has one big ecosystem with everything tied to it. It is convenient and easy as long as you’re within that one ecosystem. And Linux for example doesn’t sell an operating system and online services and software, and have a central software marketplace all at once. That is true. I sometimes like not to put all my eggs into one basket. But that is personal preference. How easy is it on Apple if you want to break free from these confines? Or if you want to use something that isn’t integrated well there? Like a game that isn’t available for Mac or you’re forced to use Microsoft Access or other specific software for work? Or you want to watch Virtual Reality pornography and that happens to be something the app store cuts down on?
Apple also has sandboxing
This is something I’d also like to see for Linux. Not Flatpak that gets on top and circumvents the system. But something that is baked into the system. I think you’re mixing things up a bit. Flatpak isn’t something tightly integrated into the system and it isn’t Linux’s default choice. While Apple’s sandboxing is part of the system and a (default) way to run software. If we really compare that to Linux, Linux is entirely missing that kind of sandboxing and clean way of software distribution. A Linux program spreads its files all across several directories and if it’s desktop software, it just runs with the user’s permissions. That is the old-fashioned way of doing it. And since Linux is profoundly more diverse, it is really difficult to change this. SystemD, cgroups and so come along to address the permission aspect of that. But we’re far away from achieving a proper sandboxing feature per default.
You just can’t compare specifically Flatpak to the way Apple does it. It is something that is focused on decoupling things from the system, not integrate them. You’d have to compare that to a solution that decouples things on a Mac. Since Flatpak isn’t available there, you’d probably compare that to a virtual machine. And if you now install Windows in a virtual machine on your Macbook, does it follow the Mac theme? No it doesn’t. Does the browser on the Windows have access to your Mac password manager? No it doesn’t. But this would be a better way of comparing the two things.
I would really like Linux to step up their game regarding a few things. Desktop application sandboxing and distribution is one thing. If you use Flatpak for this, the blame is on you. It is not the solution I’d like to see. And it is not the intended way of using Linux, so you can’t really complain. We need a proper solution instead. And another thing I’d like to see is mobile apps. We also don’t have anything that allows for things like connected standby. Android for example can receive chat messages and E-Mails while it’s sleeping and the screen is off. So can iPhones. When I close the lid of my laptop or use Linux on my phone, it just stops receiving chat messages once the screen is off and the processor is on standby.
Flatpak is great, I use it and like it but it was also blunt “we just isolate things and fuck it” from the start.
Flatpak was designed to fit a purpose. And the people who develop it have some motivation to do so. That might not align with your motivations. Maybe they wanted something to isolate things and you want something that connects things. That clashes. You might be using the wrong tool.