Not trying to start a flame war, but Mac laptops are pretty much best in class across screen, keyboard (now, no comment on previous gen), battery, and weight. There are PC laptops that compete with individual parts of the lineup (the Dell XPS was competitive with the MacBook Pros for a while), but overall Macs are generally a great choice.
If you're an iOS user, the integration with the OS across devices can be pretty great (Messages on desktop, Airdrop, Tethering).
If you're an iOS dev, you have nowhere else to do your work.
When it comes to the software, well, I honestly fail to remember when was the last update of macOS with a single interesting thing for me.
Like Windows, every update doesn’t bring anything useful (to me) and just makes things worse.
And I said that as an old tech enthusiast who used to be really excited by OS updates. I’m really far from the usual "I don’t like change" guy, I actually like new things. But all I got in the last 5-10 years was just more walls, less freedom, and not even a single cool thing to help swallow the pill.
So, after 15 years, I’m not buying a Mac anymore, neither an iPhone as my next smartphone (but in the smartphone space it’s worse because you can’t escape the shit).
I can think of one kind of cool thing for me in that period in that it can kind of maintain iPhone tethering that stays even if you close the lid. Although it's still a bit clunky. The rest I'd be quite happy going back 5 or 10 years. In fact I still miss being able to run 32 bit stuff.
The value I get from macOS is that it avoids the increasing enshittification of Windows and that it mostly preserves a higher level of ergonomics and consistency than any other os I’ve experienced.
It’s secure, does not spy on me, and integrates beautifully with iOS.
I will agree with you that Windows enshitification is waaay faster. But it’s not like macOS is going in an interesting direction anyway.
In fact most macOS improvements are only for the users who are 100% working within the Apple ecosystem (using Apple apps everyday). But those users are better served with an iPad anyway.
Also, having a real UNIX command line with native productivity apps like MS Office and the Adobe Suite on the same OS is incredible. WSL2 on Windows is okay, but not nearly as cleanly integrated as macOS is in this regard.
What is "real UNIX" these days? I'm not sure it's that big a pro anymore. Outside MacOS who is using "real UNIX" and not Linux? It's just different enough to cause problems if you're not careful.
If you're an iOS user, the integration with the OS across devices can be pretty great (Messages on desktop, Airdrop, Tethering).
If you're an iOS dev, you have nowhere else to do your work.