People have been bemoaning Snow Leopard's demise since the first beta of Lion. Snow Leopard was a design that was internally consistent. I don't think it was the pinnacle of design, but I see why it was beloved by developers.
> Snow Leopard was a design that was internally consistent.
The sort of funny thing is that it really wasn't internally consistent. It was a common criticism back then to note that apps made by Apple didn't always follow the Human Interface Guidelines about when to use the "metal" UI and when not to, and arguably the existence of the metal UI was itself inconsistent in the first place: "Hey, here's this entirely different aesthetic you should probably use in these cases, except when you don't, and hey, we sometimes use it because why the hell not".
(I would tentatively argue the Mac's UX was at its most consistent during the El Capitan to Mojave era -- after the introduction of the San Francisco typeface and associated aesthetics, but before Catalyst came along to throw everything into chaos.)
