I don't think this is a meaningful distinction. Most people here likely change more than just a 'few settings' and either download one of the debloat tools or generate an autounattend.xml before installing, and some replace the default search with Everything.

Unless you're working in an environment where absolutely no third party tools are allowed, it's expected for someone to spend at least a little bit of time adjusting the workspace to their preferences.

Additionally all of the tools I listed technically have paid plans but they're all free to use, I've never paid for Raycast yet even the free features blow out of the water any desktop management/productivity tooling I've used on Windows or Linux.

We are in this discussion sometimes talking about things that are "missing" from Mac that are actually outdated and no longer accurate. For example, Snap Layouts is now a built-in feature in macOS. It's just not as robust/customizable as third-party tools.

We can go the other way around if we cherry-pick in the other direction:

PowerToys Peek is a separate install, but Finder has this built-in as the Spacebar shortcut (Quick Look)

Preview App: This has been the best free PDF app on the market for decades now and Windows still doesn't have something that compares well in 2026

Spotlight: Still clearly superior to the Windows Search/keyboard-based app launching experience

AirDrop: I know, I can't include this because it's a hardware ecosystem feature, but I'm including it anyway because KDE has a better solution than Windows, and I find that totally insane. I use it on Windows, too!

Migration Assistant: I realize that Windows PCs have a lot of OEM variation, but I think Microsoft could implement a similar experience if they tried.

Backups: I don't really give Apple many points for Time Machine because (1) I don't think many people use it, and (2) I don't think it's really the greatest on its own, but it sure beats what Windows has going on with Windows Backup.

Save as PDF: This isn't a problem anymore, but for many years/decades, Apple's built-in support for turning anything that can be printed into a PDF beat out Windows by a longshot, and I remember how I used to need to install third-party tools to accomplish it.

Full device encryption: I just think the user experience of Bitlocker is piss poor, while Apple makes this a very smooth experience with a very low chance of screwing up and losing data (so long as you tie your system to your Apple ID to add that as a recovery option). The end result is that most Windows users are running unencrypted, while I imagine most Mac users are encrypted.