I ran a Powerbook 12inch as my main computer for 4 years while going through computer science study (i.e. doing some relatively intense assignment projects on it). While the CPU was slower I'd argue that the OS at that time made up for it - using 10.4 - 10.6 compared to XP and Vista was a breeze. I had 740MB of RAM that was very much under my control, the only background task I sometimes had to look out for was the search indexer. OSX Terminal was light years ahead of the crappy windows terminal at the time. PDF support across OS was applied to good use to create good looking reports.

Now the tables have turned though. MacOS software has suffered greatly while MS has embraced Linux and the Terminal. Win10+WSL+Windows Terminal+VS Code today is the superior toolchain IMO because it gives you access to the package managers that will also run on your target servers.