Did you know the MacBook Neo has no fan? It can go 2x faster FPS in games if it’s cooled better:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lswbpVtAhrc
Even a simple quiet and mostly-off fan would have been a $5 addition to the system that would have boosted performance by ~10%. But Apple wanted to make an iPad computer.
Apple advertises their subscription services directly in the system settings when you buy the system (they give you a trial that is shown as a system settings notification and when you refer it they do the thing where you have to cancel on the last day or else forfeit the remaining trial term before it’s over; accidental subscription dark pattern where you can’t turn off auto-renew without forfeiting remaining time) and also advertises apple subs via toast notifications.
As far as device firmware, I dunno, I felt like my Intel MacBook Pro 16” had pretty shit firmware that ended up abandoned because Apple went straight to M1 and the whole T2 thing where they tried to customize Intel’s stack never really worked all that well. Apple almost certainly half-assed that machine knowing their next platform was on the way.
Like the whole “instant open lid wake from sleep” that was great in the past but turned into crazy lag on those late Intel machines.
Oh yeah and I just got my last settlement check for my 2016 butterfly keyboard. That machine was a lovely ownership experience.
So this idea that only PC laptops have firmware issues and bad long term support…idk man, I just don’t fully buy that. I’m sure Apple is mostly better but I’ve had enough bad experiences that I don’t consider them to be anything wildly special.