Re: stability, we’re probably only going to be sharing personal anecdotes so I won’t argue that point with you, except to say that Mac OS is absolutely less stable for me than Linux.
And to directly refute your second point, here are two examples of Apple ads that you can’t disable: 1) if you’re close to the free limit of your iCloud storage, there’s a prominent block trying to upsell you to a paid plan in the iCloud settings. 2) if you press the “play” button on any connected pair of non-Apple
headphones when nothing is currently playing, the Apple Music app opens, which, on launch, will attempt to sell you on a subscription if you don’t already have one. There’s no way to disable this ad, or even to tell the OS to open a different app or none at all, short of an open source hack that nukes Music.app entirely until your next reboot.
I never said anything against an OS being commercial.
That's why I said that all three OSes are effectively equally stable. Every user of each one is going to have some kind of anecdote about their instance of instability. We all define it in different ways.
And to be clear, I am only talking laptop/desktop workstations. I'm aware that server Linux is just about the most stable thing around, but you can't tell me with a straight face that someone on a workstation with an Nvidia graphics card is having a more stable exprience on Linux than a user on Windows with the same hardware. As another example, dist-upgrade has failed many, many Ubuntu users in the past, including myself.
iCloud storage warning: This is a message related to an entirely optional service. You only get this message if you are using iCloud storage and filling it up. The alternative is a bunch of confused users wondering why they can't save files anymore. Yes, it's an upsell, but it's exactly what a user in that situation needs to hear. It is a message that all of its competitors like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google, etc will give you because it's a rather important message.
There is no iCloud service on Mac that can't be 100% replaced by an alternative. iCloud is not required to use Mac, and an Apple ID is not required to use Mac.
You are also not correct about the Apple Music service. In the Music app, go to Music > Settings... > Show: and uncheck "Apple Music" and "iTunes Store" if you don't want to see Apple's paid services within the Music app. In that case, pressing play on your bluetooth headphones will open up Apple Music in its role as the traditional MP3/AAC Jukebox app, no ads for anything.
I agree that there should be a way to customize what happens when you press the play button on your third party headphones, but let's also be real: you're pressing the play button without playing anything. Opening the included music application is a reasonably sensible default.
And to directly refute your second point, here are two examples of Apple ads that you can’t disable: 1) if you’re close to the free limit of your iCloud storage, there’s a prominent block trying to upsell you to a paid plan in the iCloud settings. 2) if you press the “play” button on any connected pair of non-Apple headphones when nothing is currently playing, the Apple Music app opens, which, on launch, will attempt to sell you on a subscription if you don’t already have one. There’s no way to disable this ad, or even to tell the OS to open a different app or none at all, short of an open source hack that nukes Music.app entirely until your next reboot.
I never said anything against an OS being commercial.