As I said, it's obviously not zero issues with Apple either. But this particular issue is an exception imho, my own experience and everyone with a Mac around me is saying the battery lifetime is much better than any other brand they tried. Also, 1.5 years is below 2 years of warranty (in EU) - if you're around here, try to have it replaced. I had only good experience with Apple customer care - much better than HP, Dell and Lenovo. Again, while it wasn't always perfect and sometimes required visiting again, at least they really wanted to help - unlike the other vendors.

BTW you're saying it was 2018 model, and employer issued, so if I'm correct in assuming it was a top model Intel CPU, these really were chewing through the batteries because of the heat. It's very different with i5, less powerful i7 and Apple Silicon.

I really don't think anyone is claiming that Apple is perfect - it's just that the experience with other vendors is so, so utterly bad. For example ThinkPads - nice performance and cheap, I give you that. But the non-existent customer care (for consumers, not enterprise), the build quality, the bad sound and displays and the absolutely terrible touchpad make me avoid it. Also Windows - and I never got Linux properly working on a ThinkPad as well as MacOS does on a MacBook, even though they claim it's Linux certified.