Prose, and your reading experience

This is not a book specific question, but I'm curious about your interaction with prose itself as you read.

For context, I'm rereading the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, and stumbled on a couple of pages of pure genius at the end of book 4, and had to take a moment to gush to my 2 closest friends. One reads but not as much as she'd like, the other barely at all and is working on it. Neither have any experience with writing and generally dislike doing it, while I'm a pretty prolific writer myself.

As a result I had to explain the difference in POV to them (1st, 2nd, and 3rd Omniscient vs. limited, etc). They were tolerably entertained by my endless 5am yapping, and agreed the passage was fun and could not have been replicated so easily with something other than the (masterful!!!) 3rd omniscient.

We discussed prose a little and it became apparent those are not things they take note of at all. They enjoy the stories, and to them good writing is satisfying when the story itself is engaging/stimulating, but they don't notice prose much. One of my friend brushed it off as "a writer thing".

So here I am, curious!

Are you a writer? Hobbyist or not. And does prose matter to you? Or at least, do you really notice it as you read? Is it a deciding factor on your rating of a book or author? Or does the story matter more? Could you, having just finished an engrossing book, talk at length about the prose, the pov, the author's quirks? Or were you lost in plot and character?

How would you describe your ideal prose?