If it was just patent avoidance why aren’t there any non-apple laptops either their sound quality? Both the microphones and the speakers are some of the best audio I’ve ever encountered.
Apple does have some excellent audio engineers for the speakers, although these days the difference isn't as stark as it was five or ten years ago.
Of course you need to get a good Windows laptop to get any such quality, and many people and companies seem to only bother spending money on premium laptops if they're made by Apple.
Compared to the two new-ish AMD laptops? For the rare use case that warrants using built in speakers and mic, I see no real difference. Maybe latest macs are better, but... Usually the only use of built in speakers and mic are as last chance backup, or watching movies in bad conditions. Otherwise it's always a proper headset or standalone speakers
It’s night and day.
I haven't bought for built-in sound quality in the past (or ever, it's backup's backup after all), but I do remember lots of laptops offered with Harman-Kardon sound system, including hardware implementation of the dynamic compensation system in M-series Macbooks. Except also usually with way beefier speakers. Microphone arrays came in later arguably, but that is more correlated with availability of audio coprocessors - T470 had not great twin mic (mac was better there), but new ones easily handle it beyond my needs.
Way above "last choice backup solution" that "built in speakers and mic" are used for by me.