Maybe you left it off because it doesnāt need polishing. It needs a complete rework. Yes, Iām thinking of Podcasts. A complete train wreck.
interesting how experiences can vary so much. I use Apple Podcasts as my podcast client every day and have no issues with it.
I have to say, Stephenās āpolishing the appleā comment perfectly describes to me what modern Apple isnāt focused on. Itās the difference between customer service back when I bought my first Mac Mini (2012) and, for example, when I sent my PowerBeats Pro in for service a ways back.
I seem to recall the experience of buying the Mac Mini was much less hurried and rushed, and they were more focused on making sure I got something that worked for me. These days it feels like itās more of a āthereās the phones, thereās the iPads, what can I ring up for you?ā in the store.
Regarding the reverse of āpolishing the appleā, the issue with the PowerBeats was battery life related, and based on tracking they didnāt even have it at the depot long enough to charge and discharge the batteries. While it was there they removed a piece of velcro from the outside bottom of the case (I had a little piece of the loop side so that it doesnāt get knocked off the side table at night), presumably because it didnāt belong there - but they didnāt even bother to wipe out the inside of the case. Which would seem to be a relevant thing if theyāre doing detailed troubleshooting of charging and battery life.
I realize theyāre a big company - definitely bigger than they were in 2012. I realize there are a lot of moving parts. But with both software and customer service, it feels like the experience just isnāt as polished as it used to be.
Great episode, and I thought Iād add a few points.
I echo @webwalrus on the nice touch of the polishing cloth analogy.
My biggest Mail gripe is actually on the linking. Iāve found it works well on macOS, well on iPadOS, but is completely unreliable on my phone if a message is anywhere but in the Inbox.
Calendar
No major issues with the app, but I have a problem on the iCloud service side. When my wife sends me a calendar invite (sheās on iCloud), it never gets properly added to my calendar when I hit the āAcceptā button. I have no issues with invites from GMail, or Outlook or other services, but itās really unreliable.
Safari
Thereās an intangible quality to Safari that in many ways, makes it feel really polished. Way more so than the other common browsers. It has itās issues, but overall I think Apple does a decent job of covering the basics. You do need a backup browser though.
Music
As a local music type of person, the app has gotten pretty hostile. Everything is so geared towards Apple Music. I still buy actual music from the iTunes store, but I donāt buy enough to justify the cost of Apple Music and I feel like Iām being punished. I also know Iām getting more and more into the minority on this point.
System Preferences
Everything Stephen said
Ending on a high note
Thank you again for hosting and maintaining this awesome forum. I know itās been a bunch of trials the last few months, and Iām glad you have both sorted it out and reduced your costs. This and the Automators forums have been great sources of research and community for me.
We really focused more on the productivity angle, but I agree about Podcasts. Itās a mess.
Iām fairly sure that the reason a lot of Unix command line tools are outdated is because of changes in licensing which make them incompatible with a non-fully-open source operating system like macOS. Pretty sure thatās why curl is so old, and why they switched from bash to zsh.
I suspect the other reason is because of security issues in PHP or python or even bash, and Apple doesnāt want to be responsible for dealing with them. Thatās not a great reason in my book, but I wouldnāt be surprised if that had something to do with it too.
I think this is my main problem with Safari, and why some people may not use it at all.
If you need another browser for when Safari doesnāt work, itās easier to just use the other browser all the time.
IMO, the answer to most of the āwhyā questions in this episode is Marketing. They want their Show & Tell event every fall and that is the driving force behind what features get attention. I stopped cutting Apple slack when they passed the $1 Trillion mark. The only excuse they get to use now is āthe technology to do that doesnāt existā. As far as everything else I think most of their problems are due to the choices they make.
Perhaps they arenāt able to hire enough programmers. From what Iāve read thatās a problem in the tech industry. So as @ismh mentioned, perhaps the yearly release needs to go. Then instead of forcing everyone to work to a deadline the programmers can work on software until it is ready. Why the rush? Many professionals wonāt upgrade their Macs for months, or even a year or more, after a major macOS release. And the public is easy, they can be wowed with a simple UI change.
The search in email isnāt great. Neither is search in the Finder, Music, or App Store. And iCloud has been plagued with sync problems since day one. Perhaps Apple thinks these and other problem areas are āgood enoughā. Or perhaps they are content to let third parties come up with solutions when āgood enoughā isnāt good enough for us. That has been my solution.
When there isnāt āan app for thatā there is usually a cloud based solution. I need reliability so I use Google or Dropbox instead of iCloud. I need to work with non Mac users so I use Microsoft 365. I prefer to work primarily on an iPad and cloud alternatives make that possible.
Iām not dumping on Apple, I understand business. And they do make excellent hardware. But with few exceptions, they choose to make unremarkable software. The iPad has reached a point where it is a useful ācomputerā and the changes to the Mac havenāt been too restrictive, so Iām satisfied with the current situation.
But waiting on Apple to improve something is only for the young.
This is where someone replies āOK Boomerā 
In general, I think itās wise to always have a backup browser. I almost never need one (like @anon20961960) said, but sometimes for troubleshooting, itās great to have.
The one aspect I did miss though is that Safariās dev tools are definitely lacking compared to Firefox or Chrome. Iām a basic web programmer (most of my experience is server side), but when playing around, I definitely need to use FF.
One thing I donāt agree with is the comment that 90% people use apps like Mail and Calendar.
With older people this is true, but I teach Gen Z and millennials and they are all-in with web apps.
I teach 500 students a semester and Iāve yet to see one that uses Mail. They use Gmail and Google Calendar on the all devices.
Even my colleagues all use Outlook. I know as their attachments donāt work with Apple Mail unless you install and subscribe to Letter Opener.
I think home users who arenāt working for a company or studying may tend to use Mail, but professionals and students hardly ever use it.
Podcasts is such an interesting app, because I really do want to love it. I love the discovery experience, and I donāt think anyone does a better job at surfacing new podcasts I might like in an editorial fashion.
I donāt even have the same reliability concerns as others do ā in general, the syncing seems fine. Maybe not bulletproof compared to Overcast and others, but problems seem few and far between for me.
My biggest problem, though, is just paradigm. I feel like it makes me justā¦ think too much. When I save an episode, what does that mean? It now appears in my list of shows (I think?), whether Iām subscribed to it or not, but itās in with all the shows I am subscribed to. Latest episdoes? How come this is only showing some? oh, itās because I can customize how far back I want to go. Okay, a show has an episode I donāt want to listen to now, or maybe ever. How do I remove it from Latest Episodes? I can mark it as played, but then I donāt want to later think that I actually did listen to it.
Itās all just too much. Give me the Podcasts app discovery experience + media control keys on Mac, with Overcast style episode management, and Iād be happy.
On the other hand, I wish more apps adopted Castroās Inbox / Queue functionality, as it is totally unmatched but everything else about the app feels subpar compared to Overcast.
I agree that itās smart to have one, but I think it should be resorted to mainly for troubleshooting purposes when thereās a critical issue - not when the dev of a particular browser decides to not support otherwise-valid code.
Regarding the reported Calendar issues that mostly related to syncāing, Iām deeply suspicious those are due to using iCloud as the syncing back-end. As a family we saw similar issues until we switched the syncing backend from iCloud to google ~5 years ago. We have seen near zero such issues since then. (Our move from iCloud to Google for calendar syncing was prompted by my job move to a company that is very much a google-shop and that there were advantages to having all my calendars in one service.) It took only a little effort to switch everyone over. And, from the point of view of āusersā thereās no difference. My less technical family member has had no issues and probably couldnāt even tell you what service their calendar syncs with.
Thatās been my experience as well. Iāve found the same is true for Contacts.
Yes, but who wants to use Google when they are constantly violating your privacy? They even tell you how they are doing it!!!
I have a Google account and wish I could get rid of it. To me it is rather scary that they take such liberties with peopleās information.
Iām not crazy about Mail but I really have no specific problems. They are doing ok there.
Dude, podcasts is horrible. I gave it a serious try when I switched to iPhone and Mac this past year and almost immediately found it extremely inconvenient to use. Switched to Overcast, which I dig.
I wonder how much of a problem it is for brand new users that havenāt ever used a podcast client before. I had to try it out to try and get somebody else a podcast download, and it wasnāt great - but not sure whether thatās just me bringing my existing paradigm.
When I turned 50 I started getting Happy Birthday cards from AARP, Beltone hearing aids, Neptune Creamation services 
, and several others.
So where did they get my birthday, or my name and address? The purchased it legally. Everyone from our credit card company to our grocery store sells what they know about us. Iāve accepted the fact that everything that is known about me, that is not protected by law like my medical records, is for sale.
And probably, so is the data protected by law. 
The News app is the app I use most often that I hate most. I use it daily. Itās fine on the iPad, but on the Mac, it acts like an iPad app. In particular, Cmd-home doesnāt take me to the top of the app.
Apple should just ditch the Mac app and run news in the browser. Either that, or make the News app behave like a native Mac app.