Not sure if it's still the case but for many years Apple's Core Audio was a big draw for people running audio software due to it's stability, performance and compatibility with various devices. I've used Windows with ASIO drivers for many years and always found it a bit buggy with occasional random drop-outs that can only be fixed by reinstalling the drivers. Pulse Audio on Linux can be even more of a nightmare to get working with your equipment, but I've heard it's improving recently.

They are not tied to apple, but it is often the preferred OS.

I haven't used MacOS/OSX in a couple years, but at least back then it was in my opinion by miles the best out of the box experience for audio related things.

E.g it took me hours on Windows 10 to have a basic setup with reliably low latency, without clicks, noises, dropouts and generally getting the OS out of my way (e.g. automatic rebooting for updates is kinda suboptimal if you plan to use your laptop for live music). Never had anywhere near the same level of issues on macs.

Sure you can make it work on Windows or Linux, but if this were my main job, I'd need very specific reasons or strong personal os preferences outside audio to not pick an Apple.

Apple had the money to buy "Logic" from a German company called "Emagic", and scrap their Windows version. Logic then soon became industry standard.

Voilà.

It's way more likely to be ableton, reaper or logic now.

Logic on macOS is the pro-audio industry standard.

Yes, OSX and iOS both perform better than Android when it comes to round-trip latency. Core Audio in general was a real godsend to audio folks for many years, and was a compelling reason to stay in the Apple ecosystem.

That relationship and trust has soured considerably since then, but until there's a new "Apple" in town for audio folks, I don't invision ship-hopping for quite a while. It is an utter disgrace getting Windows 10 to work well as a studio PC, and most audio engineers simply won't or can't use the vastly superior FOSS pro audio software out there today.