Wherever you are you can probably find a local store that sells and services Macbooks. So if your machine is damaged during a trip you can get it fixed, or buy a replacement on the spot, and at least get through the work you are there to do.
For small-ish companies that can be a very useful feature.
https://tidbits.com/2026/08/10/mac-delivery-times-stretch-to...
You don't even have to be a large corp for that, my org was 60 people with like 20 Macbooks and we had it.
FWIW if you live in a major metro area, Dell also does this, it's not terribly uncommon for business class machines.
Buy any laptop, stick Linux on it, get working.
Buy a cheap shitty Chromebook, ssh to your dev platform, give it to some school child who doesn't have a laptop when you get your real one back.
You don't need to be locked into Apple's ecosystem for that.
Except it's still a slightly different challenge each time to "get it working", each different PC. A Mac is a Mac is a Mac, more or less.
I have a nice Framework laptop on my desk running Kubuntu alongside my Macs. Every now and then I check in, make sure I could switch to it if I needed to, test all my important tasks, plug it in so the stupid mainboard battery does not go flat.
And then I go back to my Mac, because I prefer it and even Tahoe isn't painful enough to switch. KDE is fine and I'll use it if circumstances dictate I have to.
I think critics misunderstand the extent to which Mac-using devs are "locked into Apple's ecosystem". Unless you're writing iOS apps, you aren't. You perhaps even exist in a more heterogeneous world (Mac and Linux, Mac and Windows, all three) than a Linux-using web dev does.
Essentially everything I run is not at all "locked in". I would miss the ease of keychain, handoff and Apple Notes (which I like despite its flaws). And then I'd deal with it. I'd probably carry on using an iPhone (I am very ambivalent about the iPad)
FWIW my "Apple ecosystem" is why I have been able to teach myself open weights/open source AI at a pragmatic level, because my secondhand off-the-shelf kit does an acceptable job of it without me yet having to specify a PC I don't have enough use for as a non-gamer. A lot of people have solved a lot of general problems that I don't have to tinker with too early.
This isn't a fanboy thing (I would consider myself a qualified critic). Both KDE and GNOME have some nice things. It's just a question of energies.
IIRC it was Adrian Cockcroft who said he used Sun at work, and a Mac at home, because performance tuning was his day job and he didn't want to do it at home; I think this resonates.
It has been my own choice for 28 years, largely: Mac plus linux.
Maybe thirty years ago. Not today.
Just go and pick up a second-hand Thinkpad for pennies. Everything will work on it.
(I dispute the main point, too — I spent flipping hours trying and failing to get trackpad speed right on a Surface Go in GNOME/Wayland. Ended up having to abandon that combination.)
Avoid.
Lenovo only, T or P series. At least in the samples I've had, all the drivers have been in-kernel upon release of the hardware.
I am totally happy to lay the blame for the poor trackpad performance in Gnome/Wayland on the software, because the hardware was super. Absent that problem I would have used it for almost anything and I loved taking it on trains and to coffee shops; Apple has no equivalent machine at all.
But you’re making the point for me. Success in Linux involves either tinkering or constrained hardware choices, even now. That’s fine but I think the Linux world pretends the situation is better.
> That’s fine but I think the Linux world pretends the situation is better.
The only thing comparable is Microsoft. Nothing else comes close to trying to support the variety of hardware and software from different places.
Jumpcloud, I've used it across Windows / Mac / Linux end user desktops and laptop fleets.
https://jumpcloud.com/lp/cross-os-device-management-fava-bea...