Mac UI elements don't move around much—afaik they use about the same positioning that was decided when OSX was made. So the looks change but the layout not so much, and thus apps don't break on updates. Big Sur is probably the biggest change in the layout, in all these years.
Whereas MS keeps rearranging the layouts that were perhaps too complex to begin with. Especially the toolbars, with the row upon row of buttons and whatever other stuff MS crammed in there. My pet theory is that MS treats all UI as tables of various sizes, because it's easy for devs to just slap whatever they think up into rows. Apple was much better at the ‘proximity principle’ so avoided cramming from the start.
It also helps that MacOS is slimmer in terms of GUI apps—there's no ‘management console’ for admins and such heavy stuff. My litmus test of GUI environments is the control panel—and it's much lighter and more comprehensible in MacOS. (A similar telling exercise is comparing control panels of Gnome and KDE, at least it was when I last touched KDE in the 2000s.)
Whereas MS keeps rearranging the layouts that were perhaps too complex to begin with. Especially the toolbars, with the row upon row of buttons and whatever other stuff MS crammed in there. My pet theory is that MS treats all UI as tables of various sizes, because it's easy for devs to just slap whatever they think up into rows. Apple was much better at the ‘proximity principle’ so avoided cramming from the start.
It also helps that MacOS is slimmer in terms of GUI apps—there's no ‘management console’ for admins and such heavy stuff. My litmus test of GUI environments is the control panel—and it's much lighter and more comprehensible in MacOS. (A similar telling exercise is comparing control panels of Gnome and KDE, at least it was when I last touched KDE in the 2000s.)