You're correctly pointing to some hypocritical subtext, but to be fair to the author, they explain the reason for their ambivalence: it's because there's such a

You're correctly pointing to some hypocritical subtext, but to be fair to the author, they explain the reason for their ambivalence: it's because there's such a contrast between hardware and software. This is nothing new really, but then that goes to the heart of why people "love to hate the Mac". It's not that they love to hate it, it's that the hardware is so great, but then you have this kind of increasingly corporate consumer-hostile stuff that gets thrown on top of it (in the past it was just plain bloated inefficiency, like early iTunes). So let's say you are in the author's position: what do you do? Regardless of whether it's Linux or Windows, you're going to go onto other hardware systems. Many of the options are pretty nice and underrated in "Mac faithful" communities. But really, they're probably not quite what Apple offers, if not in quality, than in selling points. Recently this has been exacerbated because Apple is putting out an ARM chip that's pretty powerful but also power-efficient. Add nice trackpads, nice monitors, great battery life, and so forth, and it's hard to leave even if you are frustrated with the software. What other high-performing consumer ARM/RISC power efficient laptop are you going to find? A lot of people (I'm in this boat now) would love to see the ability to buy Apple hardware and slap Linux on it seamlessly, but it's not quite there yet. Asahi Linux is incredibly impressive in how fast its grown but it's not actually ready for primetime: last time I looked at the status notes, you were at risk of literally blowing up your speakers by doing much with them. So then the ambivalence goes around and around.