TouchID does the security for me rather than having to repeatedly type in my password unless I restart the machine. Interestingly, it can be done on Apple Watch if you're savvy enough but I won't expect typical consumers to care about that but only TouchID. They would probably ask if this exists on Windows or another Linux distro, which the answer is 'there are equivalents'. For the former, it depends on the computer, but for the latter the kernel may support it, but requires some digging into getting it to work on your chosen distro, which isn't acceptable for a "consumer OS".
Even with Apple's incompetencies with NVIDIA, Metal requirements, no 32-bit support and their silly notarisation services snooping my executables, in the end I still use it. Why? Because macOS still 'just works' and gets out of the way. Some Linux distros are getting there but I have no time to play around with my dotfiles, desktop environment or fix my window manager to get work done. Which is why I'm now dual-booting with Windows for WSL2 instead of installing a Linux distro and worrying about breaking it by installing a conflicting library or system component.
Not sure what the 16"'s excuse is, tho; that's still a Skylake++++ (possibly more pluses, but basically still Skylake).
There was only a single combination of hardware/OS X release that I ever recall experiencing kernel panics often enough to bother me. It was one of the first generations of Intel iMacs on release 10.4 or 10.5.
I'm currently using 10.5 (Catalina) on a work-provided 2018 13" MBP hooked to an external display via a Thunderbolt 2 dock. I use it for compiling Android and iOS mobile apps, web browsing, accessing work via VPN, Slack, Google Meet, all the normal things you'd expect of a developer machine.
I also have a personal 2017 non-retina MBA running Catalina. My wife has the same laptop running Mojave. Both kids have 11" MBA's running Mojave. There's a 2013 iMac in the house running Mojave.
I can't recall having seen a kernel panic on a single one of these machines ever. I'm not denying they happen to other folks, but if this is so common an issue, I'm surprised I haven't seen it across any of my machines.
Are there other issues with macOS and iOS that occasionally drive me crazy? Sure, let me tell you about iCloud drive syncing issues I've had to deal with. Or the bug in Bootcamp I just experienced yesterday where it doesn't properly account for the SSD portion of a Fusion drive when partitioning the drive for Mac/Windows. Or how screen rotation sometimes just gets stuck on iOS in the wrong orientation or at the wrong aspect ratio.
But having just installed Windows 10 yesterday... OMG, I'll take macOS over Windows any day of the week.
And no, Linux is still not an alternative. (I'm a recovering Sys Admin and used Linux as my desktop for about 5 years.) I want a single OS I can run on all of my devices, and Linux just isn't an acceptable consumer OS for myself and certainly not for my wife and kids. I want an OS that just connects to WiFi, just works with my printer, can sync photos and music with my phone, allows me to rent movies, sleeps and wakes properly, that I don't have to futz with, etc. I want an excellent tablet experience for my artist daughter. As much as possible, I don't want to have to be tech support for my family.
So that's why this guy puts up with Apple, warts and all. It's the best set of tradeoffs for me and my family.