I don't think this is fair to MacOS. Millions of people are very happy with how it works in its highly integrated but restricted fashion. While it's not the choice for you and I, I think credit where credit is due is important here.
I’m curious who you think does better than they do.
Apple presents themselves as a luxury brand. Self-satisfaction from your purchase is part of the experience. If you own a Ferrari you own a fucking Ferrari!
Other computer hardware manufacturers are selling you business or entertainment machines.
This is from people who chose to buy Apple hardware. If you buy a Macbook with AppleCare and then sell it again by the time it expires, it doesn't bother you that it can't be repaired because you never own it out of warranty. That only works if you can afford a new Macbook every three years, but that's what Apple customers do. So then you get "hardware satisfaction ratings" that don't reflect the quality of the hardware.
For example, for decades Apple has been sacrificing reliability for silence. In most PCs, if the temperature starts getting up there, it will spin up the fans. Apple characteristically doesn't do this until the temperature is at the limit of what the hardware is rated for. So the machine stays quiet, but operating at the upper limit on temperature for years negatively affects reliability. Pull the hard drive from a ten year old iMac and dump the SMART data from it. Chances are it says the drive has exceeded the drive manufacturer's temperature limits and correspondingly has non-zero reallocated sectors, if it hasn't already failed and been replaced.
Also, you ask people how satisfied they are with their "hardware" and the fact that it runs a Unix instead of Windows is going to bleed into the answers.
> I’m curious who you think does better than they do.
So this is the other factor in this. If you go to Dell or Lenovo, they have low end models, and the low end models are lower quality, and they're also more popular (because they're cheaper). Apple doesn't have low end models. If you then do a survey by manufacturer, you're comparing high end hardware to low end hardware. It's the same reason Alienware does better than Dell even though they're the same company.
These were $5k+ machines.
How many companies whose products we all use on a daily basis are directly or indirectly involved in abhorrent practices? Probably a lot, to be honest.
I'm not disagreeing with you, btw. I'm just saying the depth of what you're saying is a bit much for most people, since it feels inescapable.
I'm not talking about arm's-length issues like the extent of Apple's responsibility for Foxconn-factory worker welfare and to what extent Foxconn's workers are better or worse off than they would have been without Apple—whatever the truth of the accusations, they are unaffected by whether your Macintosh runs Linux or MacOS.
I'm talking about proprietary software licensing turning your own computer into a weapon against you, and reserving the understanding and control of the world you live in (the birthright of every human being) for Apple's anointed priesthood of licensed developers, who retain their status purely at Apple's pleasure. This is the central issue solved by installing a free-software operating system like Linux.
It's legitimate to protest against injustices and menaces to human rights even when millions of people accept those injustices and don't recognize those menaces.