> * ships with quality applications that don't try to eat the entire screen to display 2 lines of text (pretty much all "modern" built-in apps are a disaster in that regard)

Windows never has shipped with a lot of built-in apps.

Calc used to start slow, not an issue anymore. It is also open source now and seeing more and more features being added to it.

> * has an App Store with decent, curated apps.

The app store has a much better selection, heck I installed Inkscape from it the other day!

Part of the problem is the Windows 3rd party consumer app scene died off when Mobile came around, and on top of that a lot of small utilities that are commercial on Mac have always been free on Windows, so the expectation of paying for smaller apps never was there.

The amount of creative apps available though, wow. Having a lot of pen first devices means there is a flood of apps using ink. The ecosystem there really impresses me.

But honestly? The number of 3rd party paid apps I am running
that would be "app store appropriate" is number at 1 right now, and I have a fair number of third party apps running in the background to customize my machine.

The top Windows software consists of either large productivity apps (Adobe), free as in beer apps (Spotify) or free as in speech apps (Notepad++)

> * doesn't force a stupid phone-style lockscreen on non-touchscreen machines

I actually had a chat with the developers in charge of the lock screen. I honestly forget what it is doing, but I remember that the initial screen being shown is actually there for some good technical reason.

Also you can just hit any key on the keyboard to dismiss it. By the time my monitor has turned on it is gone.

> * has a start-menu search that actually works and doesn't surface irrelevant crap from their failed attempt at a search engine.

I've ranted about the start menu for years. Often times on this very site.

It, honestly, doesn't suck anymore. Except for on my ~8 year old Desktop that was upgraded from 7->8->10, with a number of insider/beta builds along the way. That machine has distinct issues with its video drivers and explorer loves crashing every few minutes making the start menu a no go. Having

But hey, dev machine, console is all I need anyway.

> * proper QA - since Windows 10 the quality has gone down the drain and it feels more like a half-assed Linux distribution except that it has ads and you still pay for it

Agree. Except, outside of candy crush (wtf MS), I haven't seen any ads.

My Mac keeps asking me to sign me up for a bunch of paid cloud services though. That is annoying. I can come up with a list of complaints about MacOS just as long as your list of complaints about Windows. And I've had Linux package managers run update and leave me with an unbootable system. (Hasn't happened for quite a few years now though, so fingers crossed and all that!). I guess that is one more thing Windows and Linux have in common now days. :|

As for MacBooks vs Windows, well, lots of Windows laptops have a superior keyboard, better specs, and the advantage of not paying an arm and a leg for proper RAM or a good sized SSD. Mac's do have those nice trackpads.

tl;dr everything is garbage quality has gone downhill, get off my lawn, someone please re-hire all the testers that got laid off years ago from apparently every tech company in the world.