Naturally the option would be to be more supporting of Linux OEM laptop vendors.

Apple always has been a desktop company, the forays into the server space never were that serious, and in what concerns UNIX, mostly an implementation detail of the userspace stack that actually matters, even in the old A/UX attempt.

I would be supportive of OEM vendors if they offered hardware that was comparable.

Sadly, no Dell, Surface, Asus, etc laptop has a screen, trackpad and speakers that come close to the MBP - let alone battery life.

They've repeatedly demonstrated that they don't know how to build a laptop so I've given up hoping they will eventually test drive an MBP and shamelessly copy it.

The surface comes close but also doesn't have Linux support.

It's an interesting point in Apple's Unix core being an implementation detail. It feels like an accident that MacOS is POSIX compliant which makes it suitable for general purpose development