This is my initial thoughts about macOS as well as MacBooks. This is coming from someone who has tried every other possible operating system (well, not every Linux derivative, but I have tried quite a few.)

Windows

The only reason I still use Windows at all these days is for compatibility. While it performs worse in every other category, fact of the matter is that it runs on nearly any PC, and is the most compatible with programs. I still use it for my tower to game with, but other than that, it performs worse. The UI is awful and has parts from Windows 11, Windows 10, and going down to the XP era. It can also often still be a buggy mess, and this lackluster operating system is certainly not worth the $100.

Linux

I have tried so many different flavors of Linux, and many different desktop environments (also a few WMs,) but Linux still to me is not ready to be used on a PC. It's compatibility with hardware is less than ideal, and while this does sometimes have to do with lack of support from the manufactures, sometimes it does not. The Linux community also sucks and will not respond to any constructive criticism. As an example of this, while I have tried Wayland and X11, Gnome and KDE, and multiple different flavors of Linux (mostly Arch and Debian variants,) I have never gotten a laptop to sleep and exit sleep correctly when the lid is closed without much research and commands in the terminal (these changes would also often revert during updates, and sometimes I would even have to use different commands to accomplish the same task I did before.) For something that is supposedly good enough for anyone to use, I cannot imagine the pain someone less tech savvy would have to go through for bugs like this. However, I still do use Linux, but for only one thing: servers. This is the only use that I think Linux should truly be recommended for in its current state, as with all of the issues in its current state on the desktop, I do not think it is ready for the average user, or someone who just wants things to work instead of constantly having to do more work just to get things to work properly.

macOS

Well, this is where I have ended up. I bought a MacBook (more about that later,) and I now use macOS on my laptop. It certainly has a few of its own issues (such as forcing you into a workflow for multitasking instead of giving you options,) however I still believe that it is the best choice, even if it is only an option if you can afford the hardware (or go through the pain of a hackintosh, which at that point just go use Linux if you're fine with putting in that much work for an at least slightly buggy experience.) Its compatibility is nearly as good as with Windows (that is, much better than Linux,) and it does not have the issues of inconsistent UI, something that plagues Windows and Linux to a lesser effect. Even being on the beta version, I have experienced far less bugs then in the stable versions of Windows and Linux distros. The only small issue may be the amount it locks you down in the beginning, which is even more than Windows does, however if you have the knowledge and will to do so, you can unlock it to be even more open than Windows (although still not as good as Linux.)

The MacBook itself

Well, as stated before, one of the few issues with macOS is that it is only available for certain hardware. And, in the opinion of me and many others, this hardware is at least a bit overpriced. I went with their current cheapest offering, the ~$1000 MacBook Air from 2020. For this price point, it is missing quite a few things present at nearly every other laptop at this price range or even below. The 8 GB of RAM included is quite small, and the small 256 GB SSD is even worse. However, it does make up for this in quite a few ways. The CPU is great, and I have had no issues with more power hungry programs such as Android Studio or Adobe software. Also, the battery life is next level. I could easily get two full days of work out of it on one single charge. I also understand that they had to make some sacrifices with the RAM and storage to be able to get to such a small form factor and weight, which is another positive to me at least. Overall, while I wish I had more storage with the RAM and SSD, it is not too little for it to be a major issue for me. And at the end of the day, the experience is still better than any other laptop that I have used so far.

So, that wraps up my review of it. I do hope to write another after more use of it, and see if my thoughts have changed after a year or so.