Can you recommend a recent Windows laptop? I've used ThinkPads and Surface Books and Alienwares and Razers in the $2k-$3k range and none of them came close to the overall feel of the Mac.

The biggest differentiators for me are performance/watt + battery life. The Mac can keep going for a whole day while the others, even the underpowered Thinkpad with a tiny matte screen and a U-series processor and an extended battery, would die after 2-4 hours. This has consistently been my experience with every Windows laptop I've ever owned in the last 20 years. Even my Intel Macbook had better battery life, and the M1/M2 blows that out of the water. As you said, in another universe. Even while plugged in, the power efficiency means a cool and quiet machine. In two years of using one for work (web dev), I've never heard the fan come on once. Meanwhile my Windows laptops sound like jet engines as soon as the IDE opens, and while building projects, I can't even hear myself think. It's super distracting.

Other issues are screen quality (the ThinkPad matte screens were so, so bad, but I think they do have nicer Dolby Vision ones too), DPI issues (Windows took forever to properly scale the UI up, and once in a while I still run into legacy apps that need manual configuration), sound (the Macbook sounds like proper speakers, not tinny laptop ones), charging (the Surface Book couldn't maintain a charge while gaming, it would just gradually lose power even while plugged in), keyboards (the 17" Alienware was a beast but had an awful keyboard while being nearly 10 lbs), heat (the Razer was straight up dangerous to touch), issues switching between discrete & integrated graphics, etc. Bluetooth and Wifi are totally hit or miss depending on the chipsets. And driver and BIOS and power savings and standby issues all the freaking time. No manufacturer seems to care enough to vertically test their setup after release, so new updates always break something or another. I heard Microsoft recently started manufacturing some of their own chips for their ARM Surfaces; maybe that can help? I dunno, I gave up on them after a series of bad experiences with the Surface line.

I'm not really an Apple fanboy, much as it might sound like it. I use a Google Android phone, a SteelSeries mouse, a Microsoft keyboard, a Monopriced monitor, and Linux at work. I think macOS is pretty annoying sometimes, like its refusal to support the simple keyboard shortcuts for menus that every other OS has. But the Macbook is just so far ahead of any other laptop I've ever used (LAPTOP, not desktop... I still think the Apple desktops are overpriced ripoffs).

Really the only thing I miss about the Wintel world is gaming. These days I have to use GeForce Now or Game Porting Toolkit + Whisky (a GUI), but some games won't work on either. (Edit: Oh, and the glorious ThinkPad keyboards too! Those are still far and away the best, IMO.) Other than that, I feel like my life has gotten so much simpler after the switch, and going to the cafe with a laptop is a joyous experience, not a race to the outlets and hoping to find a table so I don't burn my lap.

I don't video edit either. The only demanding application in my life now is gaming, which is where GFN comes in. But I don't think the M-series is particularly known for raw performance, but rather performance/watt, especially at the medium-end where the computer can keep working for nearly a full day, with no fan and no heat. Hell, I wish they'd make Chromebooks (or Safari kiosk modes) out of these chips, without the macOS bloat. That'd be the perfect travel laptop.