Ric BretschneiderI'm not disputing your valid complaints, just that the plans to kill off "2016" OneNote and convert to the Win10/UWP version is dead. If you prefer evernote, etc, I get it. Go for it.
Refer:
https://rcpmag.com/articles/2021/08/05/microsoft-replacement-onenote.aspx
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-the-difference-between-the-onenote-versions-a624e692-b78b-4c09-b07f-46181958118f
My local OneNote still show as .ones, not sure what you mean by that. Maybe you are referring to notes that you have in your OneDrive (or SharePoint)? Those do, indeed, get converted to cloud versions with links. You can just move them to local storage if that's what you prefer.r
The Mac version exists, it's just basically the web version in a PWA, though. My boss uses it and likes it, I think it's pretty limited.