I thought their point was that Linux shouldn't poorly copy Apple because they have a different, more power-user centric client base. But copying Apple isn't the problem here, Apple is strictly superior on all metrics, including power user friendliness.
There's this pattern of taking stable functional things and then hobbling it, stripping it of features, and giving it clunky ux patterns in the name of imitating some direction apple inc has taken.
It's a really annoying pattern and it really needs to stop
Yes but my point was that the Apple direction, in this case, is both far more easy to use and more suitable for power users. You can efficiently navigate the apple file dialogue with the keyboard (e.g. press '~' for tab-completable paths in your home dir; ctrl+N -> recently used folders; Cmd+F for what is basically a document DB search across your whole filesystem etc).
Yes, but there's no inherent reason why there can't be something similar or even more powerful in GNOME and KDE. This is not an argument about "who is superior", picking camps or "who copies whom". Linux clearly has a higher ratio of power users than OS X so it'd make sense to have UX catering for them.
Uhm, to the best of my knowledge the macOS file dialogue is far more powerful than anything the various linux toolkits offer.