I find the comments so strangely defensive. How can one even start to compare MacOS, which needs to support exactly one (1) vendor with less than 10 models with a kernel with the widest hardware support on the planet? Noone would test-drive a new car and expect all the buttons and dials to still be at the same exact positions, but when it comes to trying out a different OS, it sure seems like lots of folx assume it's going to be just as their old one.
The immense improvement in documentation provided by ArchWiki, ThinkWiki, Gentoo Wiki and wiki.instalgentoo.org shouldn't be understated. Almost all models are documented to the point where 30 minutes of research will teach you everything you need to know about the hardware and its capability to run whatever distro you want to.
Going from a ton of older Dell models, then to a T420, to a T450s, to a T530, most of the features I ever needed as a developer and netadmin have always been readily available, with the rest of them being delegated to cloud services and/or remote (sometimes virtualized) machines running a Linux distro or a BSD.
Windows has the definite advantage of being a market leader with the longest run in the history of personal computing, but there is definitely something to be said for the immense development that the *nix side of things has been exhibiting compared to 15, 10 or even just 5 years ago.
The year of Linux desktop and laptop is still far away, but at least we're seeing goodwill both from software and hardware vendors, and it would be a real shame we throw the good trends away at this point in time.
>>kristj+(OP)
No one is arguing that Mac has an advantage in the game, that people are working hard on *nix. It's just irrelevant if your goal is to have a laptop that just works.