Sure, but indifference isn't malice. They didn't want to suck for the NeXT crowd. They actively courted them; prior to being the iPad/iPhone company they were all "hey guys we're still a real Unix, look, we'll even release Darwin for you to play with." So yeah, of course part of the answer is they got painful to work with because not being painful to work with wasn't a priority, you'll put up with it because that's how you sell apps. That's true of Windows too. Windows started off with crap though, and they tried to fix it with NT but then they just had something clever emulating crap. Apple started with NeXT, and while they don't have a compelling reason to go out of their way not to make it suck if you don't buy computers because they're pretty, they've never had an obvious reason to make it suck. Nor, until the last few years, have they had a hard time hiring good engineers. Yet somehow they went from being more clunky than linux but tolerable because it's convenient to be running the same OS as the designers and accountants and secretaries when I first got exposed to it to... not.