Mind boggling that so many smart people at Microsoft/AMD/Intel/HP/Dell have not been able to figure this out yet.
This is an area where I think part of the solution should be regulatory: require manufacturers to take back defective devices within a much longer period of time after the initial sale, for example, or requiring them to cash out advertised features which don’t work reliably.
Follow the money. How much demand is there for it, Who's incentivized to fix it, how much does it cost to R&D, and will that feature increase profit margins?
The sad workaround is simply SSD's having faster boot times and setting a computer to hibernate instead of sleep when closed (and not on battery). It gets "close enough" for many.
That is not a workaround since, as far as I know, only MacBooks have a sufficiently good reputation that when you close the lid, it won’t still be on in your bag.
I assume if this hibernate option was viable, then people would be slamming their Windows laptop shut and stuffing it in their bag at a moment’s notice.
it's viable for me. sleep has never been consistent on any of the 10 devices I had, no matter the cost or build of the laptop. But that's the default settings when you receive a new Windows device and changing this means going deep into the settings (Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\System Settings in case you're curious). So most people won't ever have that configured. It's probably at best what pops up if you google "how to fix windows sleep issue" or "my laptop not turning off when lid closed" kinds of stuff.
That's one mantra Apple usually lives up to: "it just works". i.e. most of their defauls align with what a consumer expects, and is consistent with behavior. Windows/Linux can do almost everything a mac does, but you may have to spend days figuring out the settings and how they interact with your specific machine.
If you follow the money, you can see it flowing in to Apple's bank account from consumers.
At this rate, if you show someone a laptop that's genuinely better than a Macbook they'll complain that it's missing a notch. Setting a nebulous standard of "equivalent hardware" is a lazy goalpost intended to waste the time of good-faith commentators. It's an ivory throne in the swamp, if it suits you.
But I don't think every other OEM would have the same success even if it ended up being higher quality.
