I expected iPhone to be like Newton. But it ended up being a walled garden. I realised trading a bit of my freedom for convenient user interfaces was not a good plan in the long run, so I gave up on Mac and went back to Linux.

I thought Macs would become less open and less important for Apple in the future, with their marked shift to mobile.

I think it was the right decision. Almost a decade later, Macs still lack components I think are key for a developer. For example, they don't ship with a package manager.

I understand Apple's focus on mobile, since that's what brings most earnings, but as a developer freedom is very important to me. Not just from an ideological point of view. Also for convenience reasons. E.g., I cannot imagine going back to floating window managers. Getting a tiling one running on Mac is a bit of a hack. I prefer Arch, Nix and friends.