For personal use I have Dell XPS, which annoys me more and more - broken power management, terrible touchpad and lackluster screen, so I'm looking to replace it.
I'm torn between Linux-based laptop (no idea what's been going on in the market over last 5 years) or Mac (M2/3 Chip). While a Mac would suit my needs today, which is mostly coding, media, browsing Internet, I wonder what are other things I could be using it for in the future but are worse, or completely missing (perhaps some hard to bypass system limitations come to mind). Gaming is not an issue.
Coming from linux I miss the freedom though. That maybe sounds kinda stilted or melodramatic or something but I don't mean anything ideological. I just mean it annoyed me, for example, to find out that a stock market app was installed and I couldn't just get rid of it easily. I looked into it but it involved a whole series of things that I decided just wasn't worth it. But it's still there. Is it a big deal? No, but then again why should I not be able to remove a stocks app?
I also miss KDE which has been my favorite GUI of everything I've used.
Basically I just miss being able to take things off I don't want there, and put on things I do. Seems like something simple to me.
I don't regret buying my Mac and would do it again. I sort of feel like a good combination is Mac on laptop and linux on a desktop/workstation/server. But if for some reason Asahi went away I'm not sure I'd buy another Mac. I haven't used Asahi linux, but it's like an insurance or canary or test case or something. It's this thing in the back of my mind that doesn't really affect me day to day but is always there.
When I was thinking about linux laptops, I was leaning toward an HP developer laptop or Framework, or Starlabs I think? I mention it only because I'm not sure if your XPS experiences would transfer always.
If it makes a difference, I continue to use linux in various capacities, especially for work, so I don't feel like it's gone away entirely in my life. I might feel differently or stronger or something if I wasn't using linux at all anymore.
zsh + homebrew are the first installs. Other than that, I don't really miss anything.
I bought a Mac after an Ubuntu update broke my Nvidia install on a Dell notebook and I spent the better part of 2 days trying to fix it.