Unfortunately, the state of non-Apple hardware makes your parent’s comment a defensible position. Btw, using Linux in general means having “some unpaid volunteer do it for you”
I'm using Intel Thinkpad. And I'm pretty sure that Intel does a good amount of work upstreaming Intel support in Linux. So I'm not sure that using Linux in general means having some unpaid volunteer do it for you. In fact I believe that most Linux development nowadays is pretty far from unpaid volunteer work.
Regarding state of non-Apple hardware. Well, my laptop just works. Literally zero hardware or compatibility issues. Maybe Macbook is faster in artificial benchmarks, but in my day to day usage, Thinkpad is more than fast enough.
