I'm with you. Modern macOS is... just not good for the basics right now. I have to use it for work, and I genuinely like Gnome more most of the time (files/settings/gestures/workspaces - all better on gnome).

Mac is doing what Windows is doing "The user is stupid and must not be allowed to understand what the computer is doing - we will guess what they want instead and show them that". Basic nav in finder is painful by default (100% agree about not being able to consistently move up).