I've read through this thread, and what I'm seeing is a need for a little more training on audio recording and production (see the last 3 paragraphs below), not any real problem with the software provided.
Any of the software you mentioned should have worked fine...unless the sound level coming in from the mic was far too low (or high). But both Voice Memos and QuickTime Player show you a graph of input levels, so you should be using it to set the mic output so that it fills most of the graph without saturating/clipping. If you use either app that way, either should be sufficient.
The only problem with Voice Memos or QuickTime Player is that they don't have numbers on the graph. But that shouldn't really be needed unless you are recording for relatively professional purposes. I have recorded audio with QuickTime Player lots of times, and it works fine.
I would not choose Voice Memos because it's so simplified. It might even apply dynamic range compression and other automatic voice processing for the built-in mic, so I would prefer QuickTime Player because I think it might do a more "pure" recording, but I am not sure if Voice Memos really does those things. But I would not normally choose Voice Memos partly because it doesn't have easy input device selection or export to other formats, while QuickTime Player does.
In other words, the only time I open Voice Memos is if I literally want to do what it says on the tin, which is making a voice memo. For other types of audio or video recording, I start with QuickTime Player, unless I have special requirements.
Yes, GarageBand is one thing pros would use. It does have pro level input meters, because musicians do record their vocals and instruments straight into it. They want the kind of input graphs and controls they see on other music production equipment. Go ahead and download it if you want, but that's a heck of a lot of GB to download and UI to wade through, if all you need is some basic audio recording.
CACreeks suggested Audacity, which is a great idea. This would be a much smaller download than GarageBand, for perfectly capable and totally free open source audio recording/editing software. Audacity should be more than enough to do the job, it is like a Swiss Army knife for audio. For one thing, it has proper input meters with labels:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/meter_toolbar.html#recording
Use them to help get your mic signal into the optimal zone of near -6db.
If it's still not working out with Audacity, then go back and study how audio recording works and your mic manual, because there is no reason Audacity (or QuickTime Player for that matter) should fail in this job. Your problem may be improper gain staging. Since this is DPReview, it's good to say that gain staging, especially setting the input level, is analogous to setting exposure in your camera: If you screw that up, everything afterwards is a lot harder, so get it right. If you get it right, everything after that in the production pipeline is much easier.
Also make sure your USB microphone is fully configured properly. If you don't already know, macOS has some additional options for configuration in the Audio MIDI Setup utility; you may need to check a setting like Sample Rate. Also check the Sound panel in macOS System Settings.
In short, you were expressing some disappointment in the audio tools on the Mac. I think it's the opposite: So many musicians have historically preferred the Mac partly because it does have such strong support for audio production, so if there are problems, check the workflow before blaming the Mac or specific software. Again, this is similar to photography, the cameras today are so competent that if a picture looks bad, check the workflow before blaming the equipment.
