Linux and the BSDs might be more instrumentable, but the rest of the experience is so fragmented in comparison. Regardless of category, there is no single service or data format that everybody has agreed to use and build on top of.

The advantage of the Apple approach is that the user’s data is instantly available across third party apps. For example, instead of needing to build (or import) a whole CalDAV apparatus to be able to build a little calendar-based todo app, you can just use the system calendar API and let the OS do the heavy lifting, making your app much more lightweight and instantly usable with almost no user configuration. This naturally applies for scripts and agent skills, too.

> Why wouldn't Linux or even FreeBSD be even better?

Because Linux doesn’t offer a rich set of system services built around the needs of desktop users and exposed through curated APIs.

Linux can’t be better at providing a shared calendar API or a shared photos library API, or one of dozens of other APIs because Linux just doesn’t have those features.

Some particular DE could offer those features, but then who is going to build the app ecosystem around that? And isn’t it going to suck when you want to make a Linux native photos app but it doesn’t work on Ubuntu because your LLM was trained on KDE?

My photos are not text files.