For as much as Linux nerds (myself absolutely included) complain about distros like Ubuntu and Manjaro, I'd still take either one over Windows or MacOS any day.
You can use UTM on an M1 or up Macbook and iOS/iPadOS: https://getutm.app/
It is not VirtualBox yet, but it is moving fast. And thank $deity it’s not Oracle… like VirtualBox
It's worth noting that Apple has (for example) gone so far as to replace bash with zsh just because the GPL v3 was too copyleft for them to handle. In other words, fuck Apple.
Even so, as the other reply mentioned, it's still leagues away from Windows at this point. But yeah, fair then that both Windows and Mac OSX are doing it, while Linux is not.
Still, if you had to pick a machine for your grandma to use, or like either Windows or Mac at work (but not Linux, though lets say that there is a terminal SSH option to Linux available from either), I would pick Mac OSX. It's fine if others would pick Linux for the former, but I don't think Mac OSX is a bad choice there.
While Windows... urg, is basically synonymous with being a cuss word nowadays. Witch: "a pox be upon thee - nay, moresooth, may you be cursed to only use Windows for the rest of your days!" (Onlookers: "gasp! what could anyone have done to be cursed with that bad of a punishment!? I would not wish that upon even my worst enemy!?") hehe:-P
That Apple blocks you from running every program you put onto it until/unless it can be properly certified, and that "Big Sur can bypass any firewall restrictions the end-user attempts to create"? It's true that it's not nearly as bad as it may sound at first, and they even released a statement that:
We do not use data from these checks to learn what individual users are launching or running on their devices.
Notarization checks if the app contains known malware using an encrypted connection that is resilient to server failures.
These security checks have never included the user’s Apple ID or the identity of their device. To further protect privacy, we have stopped logging IP addresses associated with Developer ID certificate checks, and we will ensure that any collected IP addresses are removed from logs.
Though I also understand that if someone wants the ultimate in privacy, it's difficult to trust such a corporate promise, especially one like Apple known to hide or lie about such things. (Edit: also... "developer ID certificate checks", so if you don't register with Apple as a known developer then...?)
I still use Mac OSX myself, but if someone wants to avoid that and use Linux for this reason, I'm not going to argue with them - whereas I would push back a little bit if a friend were to tell me they planned to put Windows (as the primary OS) onto a machine.
I hoped for that at my previous job, and they said it could happen... but it was never going to, and it was a false hope offered. Why do that to me man...? 😭
Then I come to my current job, and they have a super old Mac laptop that was barely holding on that nobody else wanted, and I'm like "yes please"!
Bc if its Windows vs. Mac, and especially if "nothing" isn't even an option, then a million times out of a million I will choose super old, barely holding on Mac that nobody else wants.:-)
It's a single SSH command away from my work Linux, and it has MacVim, tons of other open source software available, plus a bunch of stuff that only Mac OSX has, like Preview and other fairly nice tools, which have open source equivalents like ImageMagick and gimp, but aren't nearly as easy to use.
I don't need a nice car, and I went without one entirely until I moved to the Midwest where it becomes absolutely necessary, but it's essential to have a good computer for me:-).
couldn't you always just run a Linux VM at near-native speed, and get the benefits of both?
The obvious downside is that Linux is no longer the host OS. MacOS or Windows would be closed source code managing your hardware. And any VM could only be as fast as the host OS allows it to be.
The host OS is likewise limited, but more by hardware, so it might be a small performance tradeoff, depending on whether, as you brought up, you need Linux to be ultimately in control rather than to simply run some software.
So that would not always work, ofc... but it sometimes would!:-)
TL:DR: Repeated dumb mistakes that a (relatively) big distro like Manjaro should not be making. Haven't heard any drama in the past year or so though, so maybe they've finally gotten their act together. Time will tell.