To defend Apple a bit, these things are probably much more about security than control.
Though losing Mail extensions deeply sucks (even though my personal favorite—MailHub—died long before Sonoma).
BusyApps does use “Apple’s databases”, but this data is governed by standards CalDAV and CardDAV which go beyond just Apple.
Plus, BusyCal and BusyContacts are far superior in performance and features, when compared with the Apple equivalents. Plus, Apple simply does not care about these Calendar and Contacts apps any longer, and as a result, they are suffering from software “rot”. Plus BusyApps is a company who will listen to customers’ concerns, actually have real customer service, and care about product quality.
Regarding syncing, yes, I know BusyApps no longer support local syncing, but I am considering using a personal server (which I control, and to which only I have access), to have the syncing performed, and NOT via iCloud (or any other cloud server). I realize that to make the standards work, similar to the case of e-mail, encryption is not happening for either Calander or Contacts apps, but I really don’t want that personal information of mine hanging around in the cloud unencrypted, waiting to be exploited.
I see.
I’m certainly not disparaging the BusyMac apps; I use them myself. I was just confused about the idea that there was some process for switching, as you can easily switch back and forth between them and the Apple apps using iCloud syncing. But your solution is interesting; I’ll have to consider it.
With Sonoma we lost the regular MacOS text cursor/caret. The new one is like on iOS: in most instances it’s bigger and obscures the neighbouring letters, particularly on non-retina displays. (workaround is to fool macOS to think your display is retina, which has pros/cons)
Another one to add is the removal of HFS Standard support (classic Macintosh filesystem) which was last available in Mojave and removed in Catalina.
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I have a user in my MUG who is so scared of upgrading after the introduction of Photos took away the possibility to compare two photos side-by-side that was in iPhoto. The general IOS’ification of the GUI, where less and less shortcuts seem to work, with text that is often not possible to copy, I feel that in many ways the interface has deteriorated significantly. But of course it is easier to maintain one framework/GUI for all…
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I first started using MacOS (then called OS X) with Tiger. Back then you could customize many aspects of the OS X appearance using something called SIMBL (I THINK that’s what it was called), so of course I went to town and customized my system to look the way I wanted it to, only to discover that Apple considered SIMBL some kind of security risk or something, anyway they disallowed its use in a future version.
Messages is the program that really went to hell in a handbasket. Back when it was called iMessages you could use it to share a screen with another iMessages user and have voice chat going. I used to use that to play board games with my granddaughter. Then there was an update and shock of shocks, Apple removed the screen sharing capability. So, no more board games, and no more chats and bonding time with my granddaughter. But they didn’t stop there; I suspect you could do a list of just features that have been removed from messages, such as the ability to set a custom sound scheme for a particular user, or to do XMPP (Google Talk) connections. There was a period when each new major upgrade took something away from Messages, it seemed. I finally went back to Adium, a program that hasn’t been updated in like forever, but at least it still does XMPP - but if I ever upgrade to a system running Apple Silicon I suspect it won’t work anymore.
Then there is email. I used Apple’s mail program for years, then one day Google decided to require oAuth authentication, and Apple’s mail program doesn’t support that fully (not if you use POP and SMTP at least, and I loathe IMAP). So suddenly I could not get my email, and AFAIK Apple has never fixed that (I know, Google caused the problem, but a LOT of people use GMail!). I wound up having Google forward all my mail to another free email provider that doesn’t use oAuth, but also I switched to Thunderbird, which is okay but I would rather not have had to switch (I did that before I started forwarding my email). And Thunderbird isn’t perfect either; I am using an old version of that because for some reason when I tried to upgrade it lost some of my email accounts.
There’s been a lot of other changes I don’t like along the way, and frankly if I could find a version of Linux had that the look and feel AND the ease of use of MacOS (in particular not that typical “Linux attitude” that suggests that you can’t just be a mere user of Linux, that you have to want to “learn” an operating system and that you can’t ask for help unless you have already spent a day or two searching the web for answers and even then you’ll likely get some grief for not being able to fix the problem yourself - and then they wonder why people are turning to AI chatbots for advice rather than posting on help forums) I would switch to Linux in a heartbeat. Linux has the configurability, they rarely take existing features away from programs, and their updates take FAR less time than either MacOS or Windows. Oh, and there is a lot more good free software available in their repositories. But there are also downsides to using Linux, the chief being that “Linux attitude” that if you use Linux you really should aspire to be a Linux geek and/or a programmer. Well, for someone my age, that’s just not going to happen. And I have yet to find a version of Linux that is as easy to use as MacOS IF you discount all the features that have been removed over time.
And since I am on the subject, the other thing abut Linux is that it doesn’t include some of the few things Apple (or third party software) does right. There is no direct equivalent of Time Machine, for example - Linux has backup programs but for some reason they seem to think it is a sin to use the same program to back up both user and system files (and they have no equivalent of Migration Assistant). There is no direct equivalent of Little Snitch, there is OpenSnitch but its popups don’t always show which program is trying to access the internet (it will show a process ID instead) so you are left guessing whether to allow the connection or not. In the past I would have put 1Password on the list but they shot themselves in the foot by requiring users to use their cloud storage rather than just storing passwords locally, so I switched to Enpass which does work on both MacOS and Linux (and can save passwords locally without using any cloud service). But honestly at this point it would not take a whole lot to make me switch to Linux, if only I could find a version I really liked.
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I think this is a massively overly negative list. Some ‘lost’ features are due to insecure system components being replaced. Some things are subjective aesthetic preferences, and some are obscure or implementation details, not user features.
This is not to dismiss the fact that there have been very real and annoying feature losses (I recently created a thread due to one of them!). Which is why sprinkling in items that aren’t actual lost features detracts from assessing what we’ve lost.
There were several items that don’t ring true to me, including some ‘lost’ features that still exist!
- DVD distribution of the upgrade
We’ve also ‘lost’ the ‘feature’ of floppy disk distrubution 
. This is not an OS feature, it’s a logistics issue and could also be seen as a feature gained (less waste, enables zero-charge updates, etc.).
- Save As (change to “modern document model")
Save As hasn’t disappeared, it’s just not the default. It’s easy to re-enable it. And overall, there were many features gained with the ‘modern document model’, not lost.
- Safari RSS
Technically, yes, we lost this, but it was never very good and is more of an app than an OS feature. Especially compared to third party RSS readers (of which there’s a healthy ecosystem) I can’t imagine many people used Safari RSS. I’m glad they’re not carrying this dead weight around.
- MobileMe
Wasn’t ‘lost’, it was replaced by iCloud which is far superior.
- Open Transport (NewsWatcher)
I can’t see how replacing an ageing system component that wasn’t fit for purpose any longer is a lost feature. As with MobileMe, this was replaced by something better. I don’t think anyone considered MacTCP as a ‘lost feature’ when Open Transport arrived in classic Mac OS (I certainly didn’t!).
The fact that a third party hasn’t updated their software to run on a modern OS is not on Apple, it’s on the developer. I am glad Apple isn’t keeping old potentially insecure components around at the heart of the OS simply for compatibility with very old third party software.
- A legible user interface
This is a purely subjective assessment. There’s a good argument to be had about Apple’s UI direction, but including this in a list of lost features is disingenuous and only detracts from the real features that we’ve lost.
- A usable Disk Utility
Not sure what this means. Useable is of course very subjective, but even given that I don’t understand what’s been lost. I use Disk Utility a lot and it’s very good.
- Audio and video chats in Messages
Not lost, replaced with FaceTime.
- Safari extensions not in Safari Extensions Gallery
This is not an OS or app feature, this is a web service that’s been discontinued. Doesn’t feel relevant to OS lost features.
- 1Password auto-entry of passwords
Again, not sure what this is, I have no problem with 1Password entering passwords for me.
- and artwork in the Songs (Column Browser) view in Music
This still exists, there must be an issue with your configuration.
- iTunes scripts no longer work
Mine do, maybe there’s an issue with your system.
- iTunes Music Library.xml
I don’t see how this is a feature. I’m sure Apple’s changed loads of things in terms of their software architecture and how data are stored. Who cares as long as the software continues to provide the features?
- Safari extensions not in App Store
This is not an OS or app feature, this is a server service that’s been discontinued. Doesn’t feel relevant to OS lost features.
- Bash as the default shell
?? Bash is still there, what’s been lost? A list of ‘changed user defaults’ is a completely different thing and would have a lot of other entries on it.
- Kexts where there is a System Extension equivalent (firewall and anti-virus)
If there’s an equivalent, who cares? A feature to me is not the technical mechanism but the functionality that’s provided.
- Distinctive icons; they now look like iOS
Subjective, I hated the previous circular icon standard.
- Visible proxy icons
These still exist, they can be enabled by going to System Settings ‣ Accessibility ‣ Display ‣ Show window title icons.
- Speaker icon for Sound menu bar applet, now is Headphones. And it doesn’t change when muted.
There must be something wrong with your system. Mine shows a speaker icon which changes with volume and mute, and the icon changes appropriately if I plug in headphones or attach AirPods.
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As I recall, that was something with Google as the POP support was lacking. I like POP as well and Apple Mail does support oAuth authentication as I still use my older ATT accounts which are POP based. When ATT decided to require oAuth, older versions of Apple Mail wouldn’t work (like on Leopard) but I know that for Mojave up to Sonoma, it does work.
All I know is that when Google switched to requiring oAuth, rather than password/username, Apple Mail could not deal with it. Thunderbird, on the other hand, could do oAuth and still supports POP and SMTP. So, if Thunderbird can do it (and probably other email clients can as well), I have to conclude that Apple just didn’t care.
I have been using Apple Mail with several Google gmail accounts all along since Google required oAuth. You must be running an old version of MacOS perhaps?
(I’m a fan of oAuth for this, at least when it’s well done; it’s far more secure. And when I say “well done” I"m looking at you, Microsoft, and my outlook.com email address, which I switched to using standard IMAP/SMTP on MacOS, iOS and iPadOS using an app-specific password because it kept prompting me to re-authenticate every few days on multiple devices.)
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I think the OP was referring more to POP accounts regarding Google. Are you using IMAP or POP?
I’ve never had an issue with Google mail accounts and Apple Mail using IMAP and I don’t remember now if I ever had Google using POP. I still have some old volumes with old OS like High Sierra so I will check on that later.
It’s negative in that it documented removals. Whether it not they were removed is pretty clean cut. Exactly how negative each of these removals are can be discussed at length. It’s all relative.
One could create a positive list of only added features and there would still be a lengthy discussion as to the worth of each item on the list.
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Except that some of the things weren’t removed, and some things weren’t what one would call a feature. Which is why I think it skews overly negative even in the context of a list just focusing on removals.
Good lord I wouldn’t use POP again for email unless I had no other choice.
But you can add a gmail account as POP to Apple Mail. The trick is to avoid Apple’s automatic configuration. First of all you need to go into settings on the webmail client for Gmail to enable POP access. Once that is set, in Apple Mail, add an account, choose “Other”, enter the email address and the wrong password for the account, which will take you to a page where you can set up the account as POP rather than IMAP (and enter the proper password.) If you have two-factor authentication on your gmail account, you’ll need to go into the account settings, two-factor auth, and enter an application password for mail.
But of course switching to a third party mail app like Thunderbird is another option.
Thanks for the information but as a POP user for years, I’m well aware of the “tricks” needed to use Gmail on other devices where IMAP tends to be the only obvious choice. I was asking since the OP stated that it couldn’t be done with Apple Mail which is not my experience.
I did check my older OS and realized I had been using IMAP for Gmail since at least High Sierra but I know I had used POP way back before that. It’s not an account I use a lot so It think that’s why I just left it with IMAP and my ATT accounts have always been POP.
For the sake of the OP’s issue, I deleted my Gmail account using Apple Mail on Catalina and added it back using POP settings similar to what you described and it does work. The only thing I would add is that if you want to download the same emails on multiple devices using POP, you have to add the “recent:” tag to the email address in Mail settings:
Which version of Mail were you using and which OS?
As I stated above, it does work in Catalina and even older OS programs as I have one on a PowerPC which works as well.
That annoyed me as well, but it’s fixable. In Terminal, enter
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/UIKit.plist redesigned_text_cursor -dict-add Enabled -bool NO
See more here.
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Is that a magic mushroom in your avatar? Perhaps that explains your continuing delight in Apple’s changes! 
To be clear, I do not delight in all their changes. From my original post above:
But I also don’t subscribe to the undercurrent of ‘everything Apple does these days is rubbish, everything is worse, Snow Leopard was the best MacOS version ever, I wish they wouldn’t add any new features’.
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Sadly that’s not a good enough workaround as the cursor will fail to appear in many text boxes (eg. Safari find on page field) and apps (mentioned in a comment on that page: Ulysses)
There’s a supplementary workaround to draw your own cursor with Hammerspoon, which works, but that results in double cursors in places.
I run a non-Retina display so my preferred workaround is to trick MacOS into thinking that the display is retina and then it will display the cursor at the correct width, which solves my major gripe with the new system. There are pros and cons to this approach, but for me the pros outweigh the cons. YMMV. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/01/25/running-modern-macos-on-non-retina-displays/