@Bryn I am sorry to hear that you have a lot of problems running PG on your Mac. I had also some problems that went away after an PG Version Update. Now it runs smoothly.
I understand your pain with Pinegrow because i was there too. But then it clicked. Maybe you might find my post interesting.
If one prefers PG or Pagebuilders like Bricks might depend where you come from:
For people coming from a design and page builder background PG is hard to learn because it feels like PG turns everything upside down. You miss the made-for-you elements and all the bells and whistles from a Builder finding you in a Situation creating Accordions and Sliders by yourself instead of drag and drop them to the canvas.
If someone comes from a developer background and is already familiar with WordPress Theme creation, then PG adds comfort. It allows a more visual workflow.
I am building some Sites with Bricks and some with Pinegrow for now.
While the Projects built on base of a Custom Theme and Custom Blocks (built with Pinegrow) are very easy to maintain I often have problems with Bricks based Projects that are broken after Updates and then need some intervention.
If you want to do custom stuff you can have a lot of troubles finding solutions with Bricks too. For example if there are not the dynamic data you need (these placeholders in {}). Or if you try to add code to the body using ‘wp_body_open’ (WP default hook) programmatically and need several hours to find out that you need to use the custom hook ‘bricks_body’ instead (why??).
As soon as you leave the given trails it can get hard here too.
Like I said: use the tools thats fits your needs and that make you more productive. If its Bricks, good - if PG good too. If Elementor: no way… 
It’s also not clear how one can provide any acceptable measure of control or access to templates for clients.
I do not understand this. Why would your clients ever need access to templates? I would even never do this with Bricks.
Oh and let me add: You can use ACSS and PG together. No need to use this overcomplicated Tailwind stuff.