Part of it is that Apple has the margins that they can spend a little more on parts. They know they don't have to compete on price as much as PCs do. People aren't going to ditch the Mac over $25 or $50. However, people do regularly compare prices on PC laptops looking to save small amounts of money. That means that Apple can spend a little more designing and ordering a fan that's quieter with a better design and more premium parts.

Also, because there are so many PC laptops, it's really hard to get a good review of a PC laptop. There are so many configurations and PC makers often make small (but meaningful) changes to designs during a product's lifecycle. All of a sudden, the one you bought has a less bright display or the cooling system isn't as good or whatever. It makes it hard to reward companies for creating good products. There are premium PC laptops, but they still suffer from some of these decisions and they often cost about the same.

I've looked for alternatives to the Mac, but at this point I've stopped. I'm sick of doing research on junk to try and save a few bucks, I'm sick of trackpads that are unusable, and with the new M-series processors I simply never want to go back to a high-wattage processor.

I actually like macOS, but I'm really glad happy to see Linux advancing on Apple hardware. The Asahi Linux developers are amazing and I love reading their write-ups.