Tiger was a solid release from Apple that made me switch to the then-unstable Windows ecosystem. I guess back when you paid for software, Apple made sure to squash bugs so you were happy with it. Nowadays...
About 20 years or so ago, I actually got Apple to replace an out of warranty motherboard for a paid os upgrade.
Can’t find a reference to it now [1] but there was some sort of somewhat known issue with the powerbook g3 that I had at the time that presented under os x, but not os 9.
I argued successfully that it should be fixed under the “software warranty” because it said it was compatible with that powerbook, but the processor issue made it incompatible, and it worked.
It’s kind of remarkable there weren’t more issues than that considering Lombard was their very first “New World” portable, “PowerBook1,1”! Even the OG toilet-seat iBook comes afterward as “PowerBook2,1”: https://macintoshgarden.org/apple-powermac-line-of-computers...
That New World switch is such an Earth-shaking change and it’s basically forgotten. It was Steve Jobs’ first big software transition before OS X was even decided on as the future of the company.
Tiger was good. Around this time I realized apple really wanted to decide how my music and photos were organized and weren't going to let go. Their control put me off it all. Fortunately I discovered Linux around this time.
My descent into Linux started with trying to change the background image behind the login prompt on OS X. You could do it, but it required a bit of hacking. I somehow took great offense, and... that's how I ended up a programmer.
Nowadays they think there's a need to release a major update to a feature-complete product every year because marketing said so and because project managers need something to justify their existence.
That was my first encounter with Mac and I still vividly remember the 'Aaah, so thats how a computer should operate!'. And the 'just works' feeling as well. No fiddling around with zillions of settings (which actually I wasn't against at all at the time but using Tiger I didn not miss those at all, I just worked with computer instead of working for it) and the flow of the actions just made sence, visualization actually had functional purpose, helping the awareness of what happens. First time I appreciated the drag and drop, very first time, after the clumsiness of the Windows system. First time the desktop felt natural to use in combination of hot corners. It was just a deep breath of fresh air.
Too bad the experience is diminished and what I still like were there with Tiger already in almost all cases (dock, top menu, hot corners, simplicity, ...). The simple but powerful things. New things like notification center are more intrusive than helpful/informative (first thing I try to disable in a new OS with more and more effort and fiddling around and less and less success. It is forced on me!), the AirDrop is too temperamental to be reliable, iPhone connectivity is the joke of connectivities and basically awckward for simple things even, icon redesigns are counterintuitive (still have to look for photos and system preferences 4 times more than earlier, simply cannot get used to those, are not discoverable or prominent)... are just some random items come to mind suddenly, there would be more. The forced new features sometimes does not play nice with each other. Did you try switching keyboard layouts (something that worked very well for more than a decade now) with fn button while the mouse is in the middle of the screen? Based on the location of the mouse the result will be random (floating menu item underneath the mouse will take precedence over the next layout, which is the expected way), and it is there without fix for almost years now?! A completely unnecessary notification from the notification center about dnd mode activation in locked screen (newest thing pushed upon me after latest update) has no close button but covers the pop up menus of the menu buttons available there, need to log in to disappear. Just two of the annoyances the new 'features' bring. The overall feeling is that Mac got much more stuff but did not got much better, sometimes even worse by intrusive and labour intensive disabling of things I never missed and are in the way, forced one me. Starting to work for the computer again rather than the other way around.
Concerning squashing bugs of new releases I recall Mac veterans around Tiger having the golden rule: 'Never install the new version! Wait for the first fix'. So I guess this part did not change much since.
