Has the discussion “deteriorated?” No.
Is TidBITS limited to only positive posts about Apple? Undetermined.
Did all Apple decisions have “excellent” rationale? Unknowable.
Is it a problem to list Apple changes that made users’ work harder? Not at all, IMO.
Has Apple ever reversed decisions based on known user resistance? Absolutely, if they knew about them.
More time I don’t want to spend talking about this, but…
There were 18 different topics mentioned in that thread before I shut it down, and at least 3 had already branched. It was doomed to lose focus from the very start.
I try to keep TidBITS Talk constructive, which has nothing to do with all posts being positive. It has to do with helping people, solving problems (most of which are negative), or exploring new thoughts about a topic. It’s also fine to explore a shared history—I just moved the eWorld discussion to its own topic for that reason.
No one outside Apple knows why those decisions were made, and most were long ago. If something is unknowable, there’s no point in discussing it ad nauseam.
No, Apple isn’t going to reverse any of these decisions because people complain in a discussion group.
There’s a reason that the prompt for new posts says:
Be specific, be constructive, stay on topic, and always be kind.
If people want to raise questions about specific issues from that thread, in separate topics, and in a constructive fashion, please feel free. For instance, I have no issues with discussing the pros and cons of different form factors (the iMac vs towers, etc).