As a lifetime windows user that just recently joined a macBook company, i have to say i am indifferent overall, but there have been many alternating moments of delightful surprises and annoyances of unmet expectations in my journey to learn the MacOS UX.
I'm a month in now and i have to say that attitude is everything when it comes to learning something new, and, especially when you know something "kind of like this", you have to be very careful not to let your unmet expectations of something similar sour the experience.
When i started with Windows as a kid i didn't have a "choice" in the matter, it's just what we had, and i had to learn all those tricks and tips along the way to improve my user experience. If i used that to temper the curve of getting a good user experience from my Mac i'd have to say that Mac got it closer to the target by a magnitude.
So, when you don't get the experience you need, instead of defaulting to "this is dumb", ask yourself why they did it this way, and why you expect it that way, and then if you still want it that way after considering a new perspective, chances are there's an app for that.
Use cmd-up to go up a level. That button is the main thing I missed. The columns view is actually very useful. One thing I miss a lot on Windows: quick look with space.
I spend the vast majority of my non-browser time on the command line, but sometimes for some things for some reason I prefer a GUI file browser - shuffling around 'admin documents', bills etc. rather than programming stuff or anything I've written in a text-based format. Maybe it's just because I grew up with Windows & File Explorer, so that's what I'm accustomed to for that sort of thing.
For that, Finder is maybe the one thing I miss from macOS. Haven't found one for Linux that works well and doesn't have surprising click/select/rename behaviour for example. (I'm using Elementary's 'Files' at the moment (not on its distro) certainly open to any suggestions.)
I'm a month in now and i have to say that attitude is everything when it comes to learning something new, and, especially when you know something "kind of like this", you have to be very careful not to let your unmet expectations of something similar sour the experience.
When i started with Windows as a kid i didn't have a "choice" in the matter, it's just what we had, and i had to learn all those tricks and tips along the way to improve my user experience. If i used that to temper the curve of getting a good user experience from my Mac i'd have to say that Mac got it closer to the target by a magnitude.
So, when you don't get the experience you need, instead of defaulting to "this is dumb", ask yourself why they did it this way, and why you expect it that way, and then if you still want it that way after considering a new perspective, chances are there's an app for that.
Stay curious, my friends.