Macbooks have great speakers, wondering if that's what he meant

Possibly, but literally no other laptops sound anywhere near as good as Macbooks.[0] Apple has done some real magic in the laptop speaker space, and they've kept their secrets to themselves. Shame I always wear headphones.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYB931iUjc

Doesn't matter to me if Apple did laptop speaker magic, I want my next laptop to be comparable. ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th gen (and newer), ThinkPad Z16 have good speakers for example so this is definitely doable, just enough people have to want it to happen.

Apple is way out ahead of the pack on this point. No (?) trad PC laptop is on the same level so it seems like kinda a high bar to clear.

Dude.. macbooks are famously outlier way better than anyone else for sound. Framework is the same as 99% everyone else on that item.

I was comparing the sound quality to Lenovo's, Thinkpads, and MacBooks. I find my framework sounds muddier and more distorted than all of them. I acknowledge that the Mac might be unfair since it's in a different price and quality range, the Lenovo quality seems doable though.