So first in advance: this thread is heavy pro-piracy; if you are not a fan of piracy, this is not a thread for you.
A few months ago I was debating whether to buy a Macbook (Pro) or not because I still had my student discount at the time (despite having graduated). I searched a lot about it and found that the main complaint was about: price tag and walled garden. But these complaints were also in the piracy community, which surprised me a bit. I understand the initial price is high, but in return you get a great product.
I eventually caved in after figuring out that I could also pirate on a Macbook pretty easily. At least the apps. Thus far, I really like it. So far my only purchase was the Macbook itself. Everything else is pirated.
However, I will definitely purchase some of the apps sooner or later.
I love PCs, Steam Deck, and really debating whether to buy a Steam Machine and fiddle with it. But I also love the Macbook for its simplicity, battery life, productivity apps, and ease of use. Gosh, I love that I don’t have to deal with restarting after every update or the crazy fan noise after just watching a video (I had this on a pretty good Windows laptop).
I do like to give a shout out to some of the apps I use, though:
Chronoid: A time tracking app with an option to bill clients when needed. Just one developer. Definitely going to purchase this one.
MacNotch: An app with the ability to be inside your notch and give you all kinds of things such as launchers for your apps, pomodoros, shortcuts, etc.
Refine: An app that checks your spelling and grammar and corrects it (with a shortcut so that you can decide whether you want it to correct or not).
Cotypist (Pirate, do not purchase): This app is really cool and the first of its kind on the Macbook (as far as I know). It learns how you type and then gives you suggestions, and you can tab a shortcut to accept the suggestion. The reason I say pirate instead of purchase is because the developer got immensely greedy and decided to really smack his beta users in the face with an expensive subscription paywall. Many users would be fine paying an expensive one-time fee for the app, but he refused.