I would be curious for a similar dissection of modern macOS. My intuitive sense is that it is a little better though there are probably still at least 5 layers of stuff.
So to some extent, does doing this better at the scale of a modern user-facing OS provide enough return on investment?
Unpopular opinion: Windows UI has a lot of problems, but it's still much more intuitive and stupid-proof than macOS. Having worked with both, macOS is just inconsistent to the core (and Finder is an application one would have to pay a team of developers with the core instruction of 'make it a non-intuitive and unusable mess'). Also, I still use apps last maintained in 2010 on the latest Windows version, while apps written just a few years back don't work on macOS 12.6 anymore.
(P.S. - Latest Windows when installed with MS 'PowerToys' brings a few missing things in Windows from macOS where it might otherwise shine)
Again, it's to take care of which use case falls in the majority - to optimize the 364 days of the year when I'm dealing with folders not having 10000 files/sub-folders in a folder or 1 day when I have to open such a folder. I thought macOS thought about those things since people were really singing hyperboles about it. It doesn't even show where you are by default! The file open dialog doesn't even allow to directly copy paste a path in a non-obscure way, same goes with any Finder window! Sure, you might have one indirect way or other for achieving these, but wasn't it all about the design choices it makes by default where people said it shines?
macOS got worse during the past decades but still better for everyday use than Windows (which brought in macOS ideas for its advantage meanwhile closing the gap), still much more consistent than Windows despite the changes (to the worst mostly). Much less in the way while doing your job than Windows. Of course it has different philosophy on how to carry out things and it does not fit everyone, for them Windows may be better choice of course.
No, it's not from "just my expectations". I can understand that things work differently in different OSs, and having the same expectations from it won't be correct. There are also many on the internet who defend this design choice of giving no 'Cut' option for files saying "it is more natural/intuitive this way for how humans think", well, then you should not give 'Cut/Paste' even in your built-in Text Editor just to be consistent. It is about consistency (the original topic of discussion). You give a 'delete' key in your built-in keyboard, that doesn't, well, 'delete' stuff in your built-in File Explorer. I know the alternate keyboard shortcut for that, but one has to think what would be a more natural shortcut for any given operation (one factor is how much it's used). For example, do you think one renames files/folders more than they 'open' them in a day? If not, why does 'return/enter' simply not open that file or folder rather than doing rename, while for the more probable act of opening there is another obscure key 'combination'? Wasn't Steve Jobs very particular about these little things? I'm honestly a bit surprised it's often termed as a more intuitive OS.
I'm no impartial judge for these things, but the expectations are learned and I don't know how we can judge this objectively. I think the choice of what to do with the return key is pretty arbitrary.
For a declaration of my own bias, as a kid I was put in front of macs, so it impressed me during important years (8-15 years old). I don't use any macs nowadays. I use file-cutting-enabled linux systems.
With this background I don't see that opening files or folders with the return key as intuitive at all, I don't see the connection. It's not a bad idea, just an arbitrary choice like others. Command+O I can understand too, O is for Open and on the mac they decided to introduce (i.e. invent and teach the user) a universal action open that works the same for files and programs (no separate open vs execute). That's a positive example of consistency, at least.
Forget about the 'return' key. My point is, for an operation one potentially does a hundred times a day (arguably the *most* common operation you can do in a File Explorer!), it should have required a single key press, I'm pretty fine with it being any other key. (However, 'return' key has a significant size so easy to hit anytime from anywhere without needing a lot of attention or looking at the keyboard, so that's just a good candidate IMO, and keys like 'delete' won't be a good choice for it ;) )
The things you are complaining about take a week, at most, to adjust to. I am a former Windows user who switched to Macs about seven years ago.
Enter for rename is perfectly sensible to me. Personally, I use it more than Cmd+Down to open files.
The Cmd+C + Cmd+Shift+V paradigm for cut/paste makes just as much sense as the Windows paradigm. Either way it's a just copy and delete function. Would you rather choose to delete at the time of the "paste" or at the "copy?" I don't see a clear reason to prefer one over the other.
As I said above, it's about consistency. If you really believe Cmd+C and Cmd+Shift+V paradigm is what macOS has chosen for themselves in their Finder, they should then choose it everywhere else in their own OS, including in their text editors, IDEs and what not. There should just not be a concept of 'Cut' anywhere else in their OS - you should always decide if you wanted to move at the time of paste across the OS. But it's not like that at all. Windows is consistent in that.
Ummm... macOS (aka OS X) have been using a single UI toolkit (AppKit) since the beginning. (Carbon apps no longer work since Catalina, because Carbon was never updated to 64-bit)
Apple's design changes over the years have been much more subtle, mostly changing textures, fonts, line widths and control outlines. Meanwhile they've kept all the software on the same UI toolkit so they can update these things universally.
This means that even the little-seen parts of the OS that have never been redesigned (like DigitalColor Meter, the Bluetooth file receive dialog, ColorSync Utility, Keychain Assistant) still look pretty much at-home in the latest design.
So to some extent, does doing this better at the scale of a modern user-facing OS provide enough return on investment?