I don’t think it’s that Apple is so good but that the competition is so garbage that it makes anything halfway decent seem amazing.
Apple is garbage, Macbooks are garbage, Windows + WSL beats them for every development task and in general productivity.
But to each their own.
There you go. That has always been their strong point, everything else is secondary, including their own development tools. MacOS Developers have to hoop through multiple hoops periodically, and some will tell you they're very intuitive hoops but you're using them wrong(TM).
I enjoy being able to feel where the button is and is not without looking or guessing. It's such a huge thing that it's worth putting tape on my Framework touch pad just to make a tactile demarkation to seperate the left button area from the right button area from the I-wish-this-were-not-a-button area, and also make the button area no longer sensitive so it doesn't move the pointer or register 2 fingers when one is on the tape. (actually I mostly just never use that garbage Apple-wannabe touch pad when I can possibly avoid it)
I enjoy unambiguous clicking only when I intended and never when I didn't.
I enjoy being able to rest my palm and thumb on the table and front of the machine without either unintended clicks or unintended pointer movement.
I enjoy only having to move my finger a small distance instead of my whole hand and wrist, or even my entire arm.
I enjoy unambiguous and immediate single motion drag-while-click more than error-prone and multi-step tapping gestures.
Replacing buttons with gestures was never a usability upgrade, it was a cost and appearance (for certain pathological extremes of appearance) upgrade to replace hardware with software. All the added flexibility that software allows over hardware is still available with or without the buttons so that is not a gain.
That’s a fair point, but also a narrow need. If that’s your need, then absolutely, look elsewhere. But the reason that it isn’t a major problem for Apple is that it isn’t a very common need—the laptop’s screen plus one external display is probably what the vast majority of people—even pros—need.
Every single person at my large software company uses at least 2 displays + laptop, that's the standard setup. It's just objectively better for productivity to be able to look at multiple things at once without having to cram them into a single monitor.
Terminal, Slack, IDE, and browser each deserve their own monitor ideally. Personally, 2x vertical monitors side by side is a nice to have for programming so one can be for IDE and the other for reading docs/articles.
You're tilting at windmills here—nobody claims that nobody needs it. Just that it's an engineering trade off, of who needs it.
> Every single person at my large software company uses at least 2 displays + laptop, that's the standard setup.
That's pretty cool. The standard for my medium software company is... not that.
> It's just objectively better for productivity to be able to look at multiple things at once without having to cram them into a single monitor.
I agree with you there. I'm pretty happy with 2 screens—and getting an extra wide monitor for my second screen was also a step up in a lot of ways.
So can quite a few Mac models on the Apple website. Pretty sure that “the competition” has a model or two in its product line up that is not as powerful or capable as another model it sells.
As for all of those other things you said…I have tiling shortcuts on my Mac via a lovely little program called rectangle that does so much more than Windows ever could. I have literally never ever wanted or needed a clipboard history but there are plenty in the App Store if I did. My Mac doesn’t open up my music player when I connect my earbuds (took about 15 seconds to disable that in settings)…and fun fact, my earbuds move between my iPad, Mac, and iPhone pretty much seamlessly which is really nice. I do carry a decent USB-c hub that weighs about 2 oz, so your right about that…but the power adapter that I use that can charge my Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and earbud case weighs about a tenth of what my wife’s Windows laptop power brick weighs and fits in my pants pocket, so I don’t mind that extra 2oz in my bag.
But hey, you buy the machine you want for the reason you want.
Going in, I bought an Apple silicon Mac that supports multiple displays because I knew I’d want/need that. Wasn’t an issue. I spent less than $2,000 on it.
I’d also add to this that I have not yet found anything that can’t be done on macOS via native CLI, Homebrew (or analogues), or in containers, that can be done in WSL. Nothing that isn’t Windows-specific anyway.
I have never had macOS open Music when connecting earbuds. Some devices yes, which I tend to disable, but not my earbuds. I have a pair of Powerbeats Pro.
For me it’s like the least most important feature