Seems we're in agreement then. My point wasn't that you shouldn't develop on MacOS, but that it won't fit my needs or workflow. If Apple is disinterested in supporting that, then I'm not interested in supporting them.
Why would I pay a premium to use an operating system that can't run software my free OS can?
> Why would I pay a premium to use an operating system that can't run software my free OS can?
Because you don't need all that software if your goal is to 'code'. If your goal is to run some specific ancient text editor then yeah you may struggle. If you want to code and get something done it's the right platform.
And because the 'normal' things are 10x better - power management, touchpad, display driving, etc.
Do you want to spend your time creating, or time trying to make basic display scaling work on Linux? And why are they better? Because Apple integrates.
I guess it is more like people buying Apple instead of paying Linux OEMs, and then feeling all entitled that it should be Linux after all, that is the problem.
A coder doesn't have to do anything. They don't have to use a Mac, they don't have to use Apple's tools.
Apple provides an ecosystem. Coding tools can fit into that ecosystem, or they can whine about it, or they can leave it.
> Why can't the applications needed for coding be like any other normal application?
They are - install them like a word processor or a graphics editor or whatever.
> You don't need to use proprietary software like xCode to be a coder.
Who said you did? You also don't need to use emacs. And it's Xcode, not 'xCode'.
The point is - Apple make it easy to code - the provide XCode. Saying 'but why not emacs' is entirely missing the point on what they're trying to do.