Those competent and talented people also managed to make extremely bad choices at every turn, and seem ideologically opposed to the idea of customization, resulting in an environment that is fundamentally painful to use unless you very specifically fit the box of what they expect users to be like.

There's nothing wrong with not providing customization. There's a perfectly decent customizable DE in KDE, anyone that wants to tinker can use that.

I don't want to tinker. I want something to just work, and not have too many knobs. Gnome fills this need perfectly. Thus, you saying that they made bad choices at every turn seems rather idiotic.

My feelings exactly, stated a lot better than I could have managed.

FFS, what is with this toxicity?

They aren't bad choices. They are choices that you don't like, but plenty of others do.

It sort of feels like an Apple product, in that sense. Very well-made, but god forbid you don't want to do things exactly as they say you should

No it doesn't, because Gnome is completely customisable, and the devs encourage that through the extensions platform.

If you don't like Gnome, that's ok. You don't need to moan about it online and say it's shit. I don't like mushrooms. I don't moan about it, I don't say meals are bad for including them, and I don't tell people they're wrong for liking them.