I tend to agree with many here in that:
The touchpad on Apple's laptop is all sorts of awesome, except I personally find the size of the 2016 MBP touchpad way too close to the lower edge, a place where I used to rest my hand .. also force touch for my gorilla hands isn't friendly, had to disable it as otherwise I couldn't drag files around.
For web development, not on the Microsoft stack (Ruby based for example), hands down MacOS wins any day even with 5yo hardware
That new NVMe PCIe SSD they got in the 2016 line is crazy, it feels like upgrading to an SSD ... and my last SSD was Intel's 730 series (so SATA3, not NVMe), the screen is also amazingly good (vs my shitty TN panel PC laptop) and that LG 5K ultrafine display is dope. (Way better than my PC's Dell U2410 IPS display)
Having said that, the amount of mac laptops that I have seen INFECTED with all sorts of viruses and malware is crazy high, most common one is fake flash installer on some streaming website, mac users are falling for **** I haven't seen any PC user fall for in a decade (but the mac version of malwarebytes is easily able to remove it ESP if you do it in Safe Boot mode (hold shift on bootup), so no roots like in windows common viruses - for now)
Also whats up with Microsoft ads:
Ads in file explorer when accessing onedrive (da fuq?)
ads on login screen (???)
ads in start menu (O_o)
but thank god for 1) internet 2) lazy tools like spybot anti beacon (just watch out for windows live services ... don't want to disable one drive functionality by accident, its a bitch to undo)
That said, find me a mac with decent dedicated GPU, legit fastest Mac is a classic mac pro from 2011 with GTX980ti lol.
External gpus (GTX1080 for example, via thunderbolt 3) is awesome when working but most of the time it has terrible driver issues (just like any laptop that was ever had its MXM gpu upgraded, not worth the hassle in my opnion)
so yeah, gaming? definitely on windows ... on a PC
Microsoft stack? on windows (which can run on mac if you want)
non ms stack web dev? definitely on mac
That said, you can definitely harden the MacOS easily (with tools such as LittleFlocker, and objective-see solutions), you can go to so much length such as:
spoof MAC address on joining wifi
run local proxy and filter websites (gasmask)
personally allow\disable network access (little snitch)
personally allow\disable file access (like firewall for your files) - (little flocker)
only allow run of known binaries (google's unofficial project "santa")
personally allow\disable startup items (objective see, blockblock)
personally allow\disable webcam\microphone access (objective see, oversight)
and you can do a lot to the UI too, its essentially an open box where stock settings are noob friendly (photos app for example .. no one needs to know how file management works when using it) but you can change almost everything around and end up with a system far more secure than what Windows allows you yet with 1/10 of the required knowledge that Linux will demand to achieve the same results
Neither is perfect and each has its own advantages.
As for android vs iOS
Imo android has a fundamental security problem, but security a side its pretty good user experience, but biggest issue is the hardware it runs on, snapdragon 810-821 have been a sad joke, samsung's exyon for same gens isn't much better and Helio is a midrange SOC at best (competitive gpu, but bad power management and bad cpu)
my first iPhone was the 6s, have it now for a year and a half, zero issues, took me a solid 5 hours to get my head around how it works.
And just like OP's friends, I too suffered from no longer relevant knowledge, like:
you can totally sync contacts with google services without issues
you can copy photos from the iPhone to any PC via USB cable easily without iTunes
New computer? no need to format your iPhone if using itunes (I swear that this used to be a thing at some point)
Also stellar battery life, reception and reliability
The list of android phones that I had is somewhat long.. bunch of samsungs and lgs, except my very first one (the SGS1) every single one of them had some sort of issue, either hardware or software due to maker (emc memory controllers, power buttons, most commonly but also other more ... strange issues like phone reset on file copy to computer {on a SGS4}, or phantom phone calls (phone self answer incoming phonecalls without any UI indication and both parties can't hear anything {on both SGS4 <another one, after I replaced the first> and on SGS6)
At the end of the day you can just make a chart with pluses and minuses, see if there's any show stoppers for your needs, and if there isn't just pick whichever you like more or hate less, nothing is perfect.
Oh and one last thing about computers, ever tried runing the windows program LatencyMon to see if your drivers are filled with suppressed crashes? yeah turns out some brands really don't got their act together (case in point, MSI laptops 2011-2016, all gaming ones, even the $3k range, have just really bad drivers)
but hey, as long as consumers buy, why make things better, eh?
esp when consumer devide into factions and fight\argue with one another, windows vs mac, android vs ios ... instead of people vs brands (would love to see people unite and say as one, "we the people, have had it with XYZ, fix it or we don't buy your ****" but that would never happen).
(look up UK's consumer protection acts, then look up apple's dead nvidia gpus in MBP2010, 2011 and iMac 2011, only in the UK people weren't screwed over, why? why are this laws not present everywhere? people rarely manged to help themselves... thats why, and our elected representatives are not really after helping us)
I actually don't miss the back button much. I've had a few moments where I was like, "damn it, back button would be convenient right now" but those are pretty rare, and it mostly happened when I first got the phone.