> But many of the tools available through Homebrew are so essential to me that without Homebrew I likely would have stuck with Linux and FreeBSD for my laptop
Apple is sending you a message on your value to them as a customer by the fact that they didn't bother :-)
Have you tried WSL2 lately? You can get way more powerful systems with a Linux environment and soon to arrive GPU pass through.
My experience with WSL2 is that it’s a bajillion little broken stuffs here and there. If you are not doing the same exact kind of web development that everyone else is, it’s not a smooth experience.
Anyway it’s not about value if customers or anything, they’re just jackasses. Apple could afford to fix 10,000 different concerns simultaneously, and many companies do achieve that level of support, at least proportionate to the resources others have. There isn’t some strategy here.
Tried WSL2 for a while but there was still a lot of things that needs polishing.
Finally decided on dual booting Pop!_OS and couldn't have been any happier. It's as close to MacOS as I can get in a desktop system. Due to Proton, I can now play games now too!
Apple is sending you a message on your value to them as a customer by the fact that they didn't bother :-)
Have you tried WSL2 lately? You can get way more powerful systems with a Linux environment and soon to arrive GPU pass through.