They're based on the 1984 technology of "we can barely run 1 application at once", you can barely drag objects between applications, mostly you can't use overlapping windows because of raise on click, which makes dragging anything pointless, they put the menus far from the pointer.
Why when I have my file manager view of a directory open do I need to open it again inside the application to save a file there?
> you can barely drag objects between applications
This works fine on macOS in anything that supports it. For example I can drag assets in and layers out of Pixelmator without any issue, drag emails to the desktop or a Finder to save them, etc.
> mostly you can't use overlapping windows because of raise on click
Which can be disabled if it makes sense for that app. What use case are you thinking of here?
> Why when I have my file manager view of a directory open do I need to open it again inside the application to save a file there?
You can drag a directory into the save dialog to jump to it (Windows gets this wrong), and the title heading of an open Finder window is itself draggable, you don't have to exit the directory if you already have it open.
Alternatively Opt-Cmd-C to copy current directory and then paste it into the save location dialog, or Cmd-Shift-G and paste in the location.
> My use case is I have 2 applications that I want to drag something between, and the windows overlap
This should work for most use cases. If you can see the window for the target app even if you can’t see the drop destination, holding on that window briefly while dragging should raise it to the front (my testing says about 2 seconds). Alternatively (or if you can’t see the target window), the various expose gestures and buttons work during a drag operation. For example on a MacBook you can start dragging from one window, swipe up with your other fingers to reveal all applications or swipe down to reveal just the windows from the current app, and you can drag to the window for your target. From there you can hover on the target and expose will switch to the chosen window after a moment, or you can perform the opposite swipe action while hovering over your target window to raise it to the front.
As for the new document thing if you mean to save a document for the first time by dragging it to a finder window, as far as I can tell you can’t do that. You can drag the finder window to the save dialog but not the other way around.
