It’s been a while since I’be owned a MacBook, but the speakers sounded significantly worse on Linux (and if you own a MacBook you know they can sound pretty decent) because they are EQ’d in macOS, not the speaker firmware.

Never has there been any effort taken within Linux to apply a generalstic ‘small speaker EQ’ to anything with detected internal speakers.

Similarly, the Linux kernel by default is optimized for server style workloads (throughput) instead of smoothness. It would be so easy to check for an internal battery and if true apply a few kernel parameters so your laptop stays smooth under load.

Linux as a desktop (well, laptop) OS is terrible not because it is incapable of being great at it, but because people don’t seem to care for the death-by-a-thousand-cuts issues.