FYI, if you switch to Desktop mode on SteamOS, all those applications you listed are available via the included app store that taps into Flathub. SteamOS also ships with Firefox out of the box. I have them all installed on my SteamDeck already.

A real corporate productivity suite for Linux via SteamOS would be a wonderful thing.

Rosetta 2 seems pretty good still. It’s not free translation, but it’s viable.

I don’t expect macOS to be the best platform for games, I just want them broadly playable.

A lot of that work is going directly into

https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/

So there is certainly overlap, though as you said, architecture emulation is a different beast

That’s the thing though. I bet you Valve is already prototyping an ARM based Steam Deck. It’s the logical next step to improve performance and thermals/battery at the same time.

Why not ditch MacOS? Mac’s are just as bad as Windows, just in different ways.

Eh, I disagree. Yes, macOS isn't great, but calling it "just as bad" is a bit disingenuous. If I had to pick between Windows and macOS, and installing Linux wasn't an option for whatever reason, I'd take macOS in a heartbeat because it doesn't spy on users anywhere as much as Windows, most Linux stuff works seamlessly (macports or brew, take your pick), the built-in software is actually pretty decent.

That said, I very much dislike macOS as well (I use it for work), and there's no substitute for me for Linux.

For me it strikes the right balance of usability and security.

I’ve been a Mac user for almost 20 years now. I’ve had periods using Linux on desktop, but not for some time now. I’m very much a macOS power user.

The things I use my computer for: desktop publishing via Affinity, photo editing, programming, some app dev, playing mostly older games, and I do a lot of data analysis. There are a few macOS apps I could not live without: Automator, Preview, and I use Apple Numbers a surprising amount (I like that it’s table based and not sheet based).

I also find the right usability and hardware quality makes a huge difference for me. What stopped me before was Linux high DPI support and trackpad quality, but that was years ago.

An example of why I like Mac: I have a script at work that spits out Google cloud buckets in gs: format and I can’t change the script. I set up a simple Automator workflow so now I can right click the url and format it as a link to the bucket viewer in my browser instantly.

I have a ton of these little workflow improvements that I’m sure you could do with Linux but already work well for me.

Mac's are just as bad as Windows, just in different ways.

They're absolutely not.

Not to mention the entirely soldered RAM and SSD

Hate to tell you this but this is the direction of the entire industry. Look at the new Ryzen "AI Max" chips. Integrating CPU/GPU/RAM on the same chip just leads to crazy increases in performance and efficiency. As usual Apple paves the path to erosion of consumer choice.

Apple has been progressively neutering root on a path to make a laptop as much of a walled garden as iOS.

I agree it's a very bad thing in general but it can also be disabled with some simple terminal commands. MS goes out of their way to constantly break any solutions consumers might find to make their systems suck less.