I hear this all time to time and I just don't understand it.
My 9-year-old Windows laptop does literally everything I need a mobile notebook to do (which unfortunately includes a bunch of software like AutoCAD which just gives a double middle finger to Linux). It's reliable, boots quickly, doesn't frequently bug out, has more than enough battery to never make me stressed and scrambling for outlets, and all these things. It's windows 10 and not signed into an MS account. It can run powershell, python scripts, all those little sugar things that make computers less horrible to use. I'm not forced into any weird proprietary rabbit holes by the OS and have all MS telemetry shut down on it.
If not for bad actors like AASHTO or AutoDesk, I'm quite confident the notebook would be working just as well with something like Mint Linux on it.
What the hell is it that Macbooks are doing that my notebook can't? I just don't get it.