They could make different models and operating systems for every niche I guess, but people who need lots of ports and a UNIX-like experience on a laptop are pretty far out in the tail of the distribution I think.

I dunno. I've never owned a macbook because Linux has been good enough for most of the time I've seriously been using computers for work stuff. Even if you aren't a Linux enthusiast, the time to switch for developers was more than a decade ago, IMO.