I cannot buy or recommend a Mac laptop, even though I would love to...

I don't really want to use a mac. I'm not into being in one ecosystem or another. I think that works for some people, but sometimes it's not a good choice.

I agree with this though, I will also say, latest Mac OS 15 betas have made voiceover very stable in safari, touch wood. Still, it's a messy beast and not really set up for professionals, unless you are doing music editting and creation. Even then, the way voiceover navigates is mind boggling because it is having to crawl through something which is designed for mouse control first.

As someone who has done a lot of switching back and forth between Mac OS and Windows, I can say that both have their advantages and disadvantages. I love audio editting on the mac. I use it to do radio production, and Amadeus Pro is a joy to use. I have never had a lot of the issues with Safari that many people report. I don't doubt what they're saying for a second, just haven't experienced it nearly to the extent that a lot of folks have reported. I have to have Windows for my online radio station, as while there are programs to broadcast from a mac, I found them, and the way they all work together, to be very complicated. But all my audio editting, and most of my casual browsing is done on Mac OS. Also, I much prefer email management on the mac as opposed to anything on Windows. Thunderbird, with 3 email accounts, that have emails going back in some cases almost 10 years, becomes so bogged down it is not useable. Lots of people get SNR on the mac side, but that's what I get with Thunderbird on Windows. The Apple email client handles it without an issue.
I recently got my hands on an m1 macbook air. It's not the latest or greatest, but I'm still super happy with it.

I'm a Mac guy for life! I wouldn't go back to Windows if they paid me! Jaws was getting clunkier by the update, I had to switch between 3 screen readers and 2 browsers to get stuff done, and of course, audio driver conflicts! My Mac just works! Yes, if I want to use Google Docs, I have to use Chrome, and it does seem Chrome is a better browser over all, but I still like Safari! I use Pro Tools, Reaper, and Logic, and they all work beautifully! Pro Tools is inaccessible with Windows, and Logic is nonexistent. I have an M1 MacBook Pro, and an Intel iMac. I love them both.

I'm a heavy user of Google Docs on MacOS. A few years back, I wrote this article on how I do it. At the time, Chrome and Safari were apples and oranges, but Safari has dropped in usability to the point where Chrome is now my default browser, not just for Docs but for everything. I still use Safari for websites where I expect to use reader view.

As for that article, while AppleVis was offline, Google Drive dropped a bombshell on us with a completely revamped keyboard shortcut palette. Wow did that ever kill my productivity. I still have to open the shortcuts menu and look stuff up. So I'll have to update that article to reflect the new shortcut palette.

I don't think I'd go so far as to declare I can't recommend a MacOS platform. I'd put it differently: No matter what platform you buy, you'll run into problems. I can't switch to iOS for Docs because I frequently use it while I'm in a Zoom call and need to have my camera on, as one example. And a year or so back, I shared my thoughts about returning to Windows in a blog post, so I won't repeat them here.

I know people with macs and they don't report the issues people are having. have people thought about getting training to make sure there aren't tips and tricks they don't know? I have no doubt you are having the issues but it may be do to a lack of knowledge or you are thinking you are doing something correct but you aren't. This seems like a good site. I can't imagine if macs were that bad this site would exist. check it out. Maybe you can get funding for training?
https://macfortheblind.com/

I never used Google docs, even on Windows. When I got my first mac, during my junior year of college, I did everything in pages, and that was even before they had put in as much work to make it better with Voiceover. I've played around with Pages here and there, prepared Bible studies for church and such, but those were for my own use, so there was no concern about how they looked. So, I can't speak to any issues you may be having. What I can say, is that for me, Safari is a lot more stable than what is often reported here. Again, not doubting the claims, but can't say I have experienced them myself.

This is the problem. Either liek me and most here you have just so much problems, or you don't. What is true? As a developer and someone who tries a lot of weird stuff like chromevox with chromeos, all the flavors you could imagine of linux with and without desktop and orca or terminal with speakup, and of course windows... As much as I hate it, if you aren't on windows, mac is your second bet in terms of overall accessibility. If you don't use terminal and 99% of your things are online, then honestly you'd be surprised with how good chromevox is with web (I rank it just after nvda, so that gives you an idea). Google Docs is litterally incredible with chromevox and chromeos, if it's not windows with nvda and chrome.
But yes, macos is so damn good but voiceover just ruins the experience as a fully blind user who actually wants to take full advantage of their nice keyboard. I have a lot of difficulties for coding, or even latex with option left and right arrow for navigation voiceover does so much crazy things. I have just remapped commander (left option) with uiojklm,. so it's really voiceover that moves the cursor, like what orca and speakup have for example. I'll tell you my experience. Also mac voiceover and web accessibility is no way near what windows screen readers have. Say hi to safari/chrome does not respond when you go on td easyweb to see your monthly statemetn. that simple table is too much for the poor voiceover, even on sequoia (yes).
Anyways. But definitely macos sequoia does correct its sheer amount of bugs so we have at least that, especially in iwork suite.

sorry if this changes the focus slightly,
but can someone tell me how vscode behaves on mac? I would love to switch for work but need to know if this is possible?

VSCode is generally good on mac. I won't say more than that as I still have a very limitted experience.

thanks for the answer! are you also using vscode with braille? or more in general, how do you navigate through the editor?

Just touching on the argument that some people aren't trained on mac... Though I completely agree this could be an issue, I'd also point out that voiceover is over complicated on many levels and isn't nearly as intuitive as other apple products or even screen readers on windows. This, I feel, is a design flaw. We shouldn't have to hold down VO keys to navigate or switch between modes. It should, as they say, just work with the most basic of competents. I recall first coming to the mac from windows and was highly confused by how convoluted the screen reader was. It has improved in those 15 years... Not by much.

I'm sure there are some who find it easy to use through familiarity, but stepping back and looking at the number of keystrokes it requires to do things is usually a good indicator of design quality. I personally find it a bit mad that, in finder, I need to use two keys to launch an app.

For the sited, I'd always suggest a mac, they are great and very good value. For the blind, I'd say a great deal of the proposition is lost because voiceover is badly designed and not nearly as mature as offerings on windows. As usual, we get the worst of both worlds. Good screen readers on a bad OS, windows, or a bad screen reader on a great OS, mac.

This is so true. The user is left to deal with the products so difficult to use.
Just 30 minutes ago I was in class applying apa style in pages. Guess what? For a thing as simple as writing text in the header or footer, I had to sync mouse cursor with keyboard then mouse click with voiceover. Then whenever you are done with that particulare section of the header or footer voiceover seems to only see that latest section touched, left centre or right, and the other two are forgoten. This was of course noticed when I was very new to mac at 13.5, then I was... Okay, maybe there's something I am doing wrong. In Sequoia this is still there and I don't even wanna bet that it was there way before 13.5. And this is just one bug with one feature of one app of the iwork suite.
Preview with pdf is horrible with simple html lists, not to mention that the find next/previous italic text does not work while the formatting with vo t does say that text is italic, and of course with verbosity rotor text attribute set to announce voiceover will only tell the formating change when you actually interact with that text in that specific element within that list... At which point will the blind community stop selling macs to non musicians and/or make apple understand that they will no longer be tolerating this abusive relationship anymore?
As a dev I am at least happy that this gives me a huge opportunity to create another platform for bug tracking at dev and technical audience that I'm working on, more newws on that later this month hopefully. Another random bug is when cursor jumps randomly within portions of words because the trackpad is so big (as of writing this) is only one of many problems. The sad thing I'd love nothing more than be 100% happy with macos (which aI m) and voiceover there (which I am absolutely not), but apple are making this very very very hard.
Like text checker is stil not there in safari with voiceover? Or any web text field I think on any browser. They broke Monako editor on the web with voiceover on safari which was working very well around sonoma 14.0... And so on.
I saw just 2-3 bugs correction on sequoia and that is what convinced me to keep my mac, not to mention the hardware and insane battery life, otherwise I'd have sold it already and never, never look back. I still love my iphone, but mac? As long as it helps me doing what I need to do with it I am fine, but the overall experience is less than ideal. Because of all these bugs I bought a pro but am currently using it like an air because coding and text navigation and just web browsing and terminal is so horrible.

Without sarcasm though, remember that on ps5 it's an mvp of a screen reader, when you enter a web area you can litterally do nothing but switch window. And as far as I know Nintendo doesn't even have a screen reader at all. You can still do much more on macos than chromeos, although chromevox as a screen reader on the web is just incredible. The day (probably never but I can dream) google release chromeos flex for arm and asahi or equivalent is more mature I'll definitely be installing that to try.

RIP bootcamp