The only non biased answer that you will probably get, as I have used all 3 extensively. I run windows on my desktop, linux on my laptop, and use a Mac for work

The only non biased answer that you will probably get, as I have used all 3 extensively. I run windows on my desktop, linux on my laptop, and use a Mac for work. Ill group Windows and Linux into one for hardware since you will likely buy a windows laptop and install linux on it. Hardware wise, generally, battery life for use is worse compared to Mac. Generally, you can get ones that last like 10 hours with light use, so its not too much of an issue, but if you are frequently without a place to charge, you will find Macs much longer lasting. Also, depending on the laptop you get, you can get subpar touchpads and displays, but generally at $600 or above, these aren't an issue. Mac wise, the hardware problems are way more present. No way to change out SSD, no way to upgrade ram, no way to replace battery, and you have hardware locks on the software you can run. You also don't get a choice for an actual graphics card, which is a much better choice if you want to do mobile ML, as Apple ANE is pretty much reserved for their own software. Software wise, Windows 11 is pretty good these days, but you have to do some leg work. You need to get the pro version, sign on originally with a microsoft account, then turn on local login, and then disable a bunch of shit. There are github scripts for this, https://github.com/topics/windows-11-debloat https://github.com/topics/windows-11-debloat is a good start. Its definitely a more resource heavy OS compared to Mac or Linux, but its the only one that can run ALL software, since WSL2 is pretty much native Linux and works extremely well, even for ML with talking to the graphics cards as well as graphical linux apps since Windows has an X server (although first start is slow). Linux wise, this is hard to quantify because depending on the laptop and distro, you can have different mileage. Generally, Linux Mint is super safe and will work with everything - the only tweaks you may have to do is hardware features (like fn+f keys for things like backlight). Manjaro is also very good these days. MacOS is also fairly good for general use with features, but it gets in your way quite a bit with permissions, and tries really hard to force you to use Apple products. Also with Apple Silicon, Rosetta performance still varies quite a bit between software that is not native. In general, if you want the most adaptable option, I would say that you get a Thinkpad Carbon. If you want something that feels like MacOS, Elementary OS linux distro is very close to that. If you just want max battery life, get a Mac.