You're liking the macOS variant more, because it's almost identical to Mavericks and older in design and functionality. High Sierra is the first version of the "modern" era to actually bring under the hood changes. High Sierra is smoother with system animations and such, but loading times are slower and many apps run very flaky for some reason (Photoshop CS6 hates HS)
iOS on the other hand changes every year, which is annoying because it breaks a thousand things, and makes older devices run like garbage, because Apple didn't bother to optimize the changes they made. My 6S throttles to performance levels you'd expect from a 5S or 6, yet my 6S still outperforms those devices, even though they are running at the same speeds. I never noticed it until recently and it adds to the flame that Apple is doing something to older devices and we can't figure out what. #Capitalism