In some ways yes. I don't think there was an OS that was that much clean looking and without bloat while having a good base. The basic install only gave you what you really need, and there's some beauty in that.
I guess text-based Debian install would be comparable for servers, but that's it.
That said I don't think we necessarily went backwards, but just in different direction that some people dislike, and that's OK, nowadays we have options anyway.
They don't call it OSX anymore. They renamed to macOS in 2016. Then in 2020 they changed the naming scheme from 10.X to X. There was 10.14, 10.15 and then macOS 11, macOS 12, etc.
I don't think NT version means anything anymore, except for some compatibility checking, but I think modern software checks more for dependencies than what Windows version it is running on. The reason probably is that not much software uses native Win32 API's anyway but they use frameworks, libraries, etc., and these probably check for something else than NT number (like feature update string or OS build).
† lucia scarlet 🩸, @luciascarlet
and people STILL try to convince me Linux and Windows are better when the DATA clearly shows otherwise. SMH
[A 3D column bar chart is shown. The title is "Operating systems by current version". Linux has a value of 6. Windows has a value of 11. macOS has a value of 14.]