As much as I hate macs or any other Apple products, I admit that the MBP 14 or any mac with the Apple Silicon is simply irreplaceable.
I searched to the end of the earth for a comparable Linux or Windows laptop with no vain. If it's Windows (+WSL), then I have to deal with Windows as a platform that I find awful. Adding to that, the poorer battery life and screen, keyboard, touchpad and speaker quality compared to Macbooks. Coming to Linux, brands like Framework haven't seemed like they've fully gotten over the reliability issues as of yet, and the battery life is a huge problem.
I took the eventual jump into an M1 Pro MBP 14", and I like every bit of time I spend with it. It's a stellar all-in-one device. The OSX platform is clean, versatile and removes a lot of headaches and manual overhead I would have to deal with if using a Linux desktop from time to time. And the battery? Lasts the entire day.
I'm a Windows admin by day - I tried to daily drive Linux for a while on my main home PC but had issues and ended up just going back to Windows 10 which I've never had any issues with.
I (as of the past year) now own an iPhone and AirPods and have been quite impressed with the experience so I'm going in hoping I'll enjoy using macOS - having seen it from my perspective at work (managed without MDM/ABM, hopeless issues) it's been a pretty bad experience but for home use that shouldn't be an issue at all.
Trust me, Windows 10 with WSL is just great in a lot of ways - I just found myself really shooing away Windows as an OS platform, but I also saw that it came a really long way compared to 10 years ago.
I would say the hardware on Mac is what takes it the extra mile for now, if Windows laptops end up catching up, it will be an interesting fight to watch.
I plan to get a VM up (or RDP) since I'll need lots of Windows only utilities and I usually just SSH into a Linux server if I need that toolset.
I see Windows get a lot of flak all over the internet and while I agree that the Home version is an ad-riddled mess I've never had it reboot automatically on me, delete my files or install apps without my permission on Pro/Ent. I know that macOS has it's annoyances and quirks but I'm willing to power through those if it means a better device as a whole.
Oh great, I still have my Win 10 Pro License I bought years ago, but never really used it much. Is there any other difference from the Home version that makes it more developer-friendly?
BTW, for the UX gaps that I saw in OS X vs Linux/Windows, I was fortunate enough to have found some apps that will help there, and I've been quite happy with the quality they offered as well (albeit being paid software)
It seems Microsoft locked a lot of the stuff I use down on Home, a lot of registry keys that you can tweak don't work and MMC is useless. You also can't remote desktop into it.
This script [0] is part of our deployment process at work and I run it on my home machines as well, the Pro version has helpful ads for Office instead of TikTok etc, this removes them all and sets some sane defaults.
I've noticed the paid apps thing about Apple - even on a jailbroken iPhone the tweaks cost 99p here and there as opposed to rooting an Android phone where all the modules you'd use are FOSS.
I’ve just ordered a MacBook Pro 14” (even though it was horrendously expensive) and I hope I can eBay the Framework.