That is unfair. Apple has a billion devices in active use so there are bound to be the occasional issue. And even with those issues it is still a _far_ better experience than either Linux or Windows.
I replaced the MBP since the I had to replace the thinnest keyboard in the world, but I had problems with BT, WiFi, crashes, random external monitor glitches, no support for two external monitors via TB 3.0 (look it up, same hardware works under windows!!). Ask my diehard OSX fan coworker that just had to upgrade OSX just to get wifi working at home. I stayed for Windows since my MBP stopped working a week after I got the keyboard replaced and to be honest I really can't bother to move back. Everything just works here.
OSX has left the domain of the power user and has been relegated to into the domain of the consumer user that likes the Apple marketing.
I am monitoring the situation with ARM CPUS closely and that would be a motivation to switch back, but right now it feels my next computer upgrade will be windows based high end laptop. Better OS and better price performance are hard to argue with.
PS: If you're a developer and you're still clinging to OSX, try it - the whole experience is next level (compared to the whole brew ecosystem). Download WSL for windows, get Ubuntu from windows store and use the Windows Terminal to experience native Ubuntu. Hell if you're using VS Code, all you need to do is type "code ." from Ubuntu to open VS Code in Windows and develop in native Linux.
RAM usage due to the Linux VMs might be the issue in your case, I have loads of it.
Win10’s last 2 years of “builds” are very good. It still rots like regular Windows, but I got 3.5 years of heavy use before reinstalling it. Main apps are Unity, Visual Studio 2017, and some hardware design stuff (SOLIDWORKS, KiCad, SEGGER). It feels so liberating to have all my niche apps on the PC without having to virtualize.
User experience on Windows is a little jankier, but the utility of the niche apps makes up for it. I miss AirDrop. If I were to advise Microsoft on one thing: fix the Control Panel situation in Win10. It’s like layers of bad makeup.
Windows also restores much worse than macOS. I miss Time Machine. I purchased a tool called Macrium Reflect which gets me close enough, and actually can restore a bootable system.
I truly want what you say to match my personal experience... but sadly not. Mac has just been superior in every way.
And now with the move to Arm and seeing the benchmarks starting to come out, it seems yet another huge reason to stick with Apple.
Typically with an Apple device, except for the butterfly keyboards, you could be reasonably sure that all the interaction points were at least mostly decent - display, inputs, speakers microphone, charger, system noise (fan and electrical). You could also be sure that the inbuilt feature set such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Thunderbolt, USB (USB3 was a clusterf... on PCs in the early days), even charging would work reasonably reliably.
The other nice thing about Apple's laptops for a long time has been longevity of batteries - Apple were the first manufacturer to move to 500 cycle batteries with the 2008 Unibodies, and then 1000 cycle batteries later on. Additionally, they have pretty good charging algorithms to preserve battery life over the long term - not something that is the case with many other brands.
However, I think Apple have regressed on some of these fronts since 2015 (maybe they'll redeem themselves with the M1). The touchbar and T2 have been notorious for strange issues. The USB-C only setup has been both obnoxious for anyone who ever needs to use a Type A device, and notorious for strange issues such as heat generation when charging from the "wrong" side - a clear step backwards from MagSafe. The quality of their machines has suffered with the butterfly keyboard, flexgate, less robust internals (see Louis Rossmann for more details!), and anaemic cooling (one of the most impressive things about the original retina MBP was the improvement in the cooling system for sustained performance vs the thicker unibody). MacOS itself also declined in quality somewhat obviously since somewhere around Snow Leopard, with mere flashes of brilliance inbetween since then.
At the same time, Windows 10 has improved dramatically and is now solidly Microsoft's best OS since Windows 7, beating even that OS out in many ways. And, while I don't think the PC laptops have caught up, many of them are now within firing range of Apple devices - certainly close enough that in many cases, for the few that actually get all the touchpoints right, they offer an experience that isn't too far away from the best Mac experience I've had.
I've been running big sur on a 2020 iMac during the public beta. I had 4 issues that I raised that were solved:
* SMB wasn't loaded at login, so an SMB volume mapping failed
* Inbuilt VPNs (L2TP over IPSec) didn't work until the last but one before the public release, but wireguard worked
* Minor bug loading a JPG as the avatar for a Contact through Maps for my Home card. I got requests for additional info on this one.
In terms of apps and utilities:
* Bartender needed to be redone and has been
* Karabiner needed changes to replace a kext
* Utilities that add keyboard shortcuts etc needed some permission finangling
* Things like OneDrive and Google Backup and Sync needed disk permissions
* iTerm2 needed to be given full disk access
So all in all, Big Sur as an upgrade over Catalina, was pretty smooth. That was from a move from a laptop running Catalina as a Mojave upgrade via Migration Assistant.
YMMV.