Yes, that is one of the main reasons why a MacBook is recommended - minimal maintenance, almost nothing that can go wrong, unless something severely happens with the hardware.
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I am an academic at a university and I use track changes in Word often.
It is especially useful when you are working with someone else on a document and you want them to know what changes you have made to it.
Students often do group work and use track changes to help control the flow of editorship of a document.
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You can just as easily say that with a good Windows laptop. The only “maintenance” I’ve done on my Dell XPS in the 6 years I’ve had it is replacing the hard drive it came with to a bigger capacity one. Try doing that on a Macbook Air.
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Most data resides in the cloud anyhow, especially in corporate or education environments.
The times of a windows laptop with local storage are over. (I regret that, but it is the consequence of low cost telecommunications)
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Hard drives can and do fail. Does Apple really expect you to throw away an otherwise good laptop simply because the hard drive fails? Or would a repair involve a whole new motherboard with the hard drive soldered on to it (along with the RAM and CPUI assume)?
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The Right to Repair is getting traction. I don’t think that Apple gets away with it much longer.
On a personal note, I do like repairing old stuff and try to get our machines working as long as possible. Until recent, I used a maxed out Lenovo x220 which beat most modern laptops with regards to speed and portability. Spare battery. I also have a working iBook G4 which I don’t use anymore, but it works. Oh, the Macpro trashcan is a favourite too which I use for my music.
Vital thing here , make sure that you use the Apple cloud based storage, if anything happens to the computer then it is very seamless to back up.
All my campaigning and source material stored on my MacBook Air are accessible via my iPad
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Not really, but in recent years at least I can’t really recall the need.
OS X/macOS has always had pretty good native image support, I suspect I’ve bought several image utility type apps on the Mac app store but rarely use them.
You may or may not be aware that Macs have the ability to Print to PDF so fairly easy to generate basic PDFs of documents or slideshows etc. I often print web pages to PDF though formatting isn’t always as you’d like it to be.
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I was always a bit sceptical of the icloud backup systems until an older iPhone would no longer manually backup fully due to I assume a lightning connector problem - backups would get so far then fail.
Enabled icloud backup over wi-fi and after many hours it had completed the task.
Restoring to a new iPhone was extremely simple, and it was pretty much up and running in minutes and downloaded content for offline usage in the background until it was complete.
I’ve always been one to do manual backups and with several Macs in the past I’ve really not quite got my head around the automatic backup system when you’d have duplicate similarly named folders and content you’d not want merged. From memory backups from different machines are supposed to be kept separate - I should investigate again as I really need to get the kids’ Macbooks backed up.
I use iCloud storage regularly though just using it manually as a save destination for files/documents etc
I have a selection of windows laptops and a MacBook Air m2, we also have an m1 MacBook Air and MacBook m1 pro in the house.
If you want a fit and forget solution get the Mac, it’s as simple as that.
I prefer windows for desktop it’s my main rig, but for laptop macs all the way, joy to use and still the best track pad out there. There is no use for touchscreen on laptops.
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Just asked a freshly-graduated Physicist, who also recommended MacBook, but additionally warned to check the AI features that are now coming in.
For example, MS now has Recall, which is switched on as part of Recommended Settings and takes a screenshot every few seconds so it can ‘learn’ what you normally do. It may therefore capture passwords etc. Also some now force updates, so if you’re in the middle of a piece of work and it decides to update, you could lose it.
Macs may well do all of this in a different way of course, so the take-home lesson is check defaults and take control!
Mark
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My understanding is that MS are no longer deploying this feature. It was never fully deployed, only ever beta’d. After very bad reception to its capabilities it was pulled a number of weeks ago. See link below by way of info.
Timing of Windows OS updates can be controlled via the Win OS update interface so updates do not interfere with ongoing activities.
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It is almost as if some of the myths about Windows being spread here are at least a decade out of date. I had a brief dalliance with Macs about 15 years ago, didn’t find them any easier than Windows and got sick of the sight of the spinning beach ball but I wouldn’t claim that would be a typical experience now.
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I use a Windows machine for work (Lenovo Yoga) and a Mac for home (MacBook Pro). The differences between the two operating systems are pretty minor these days and much will come down to personal preference. The Apple hardware tends to be better quality than many of the Windows based machines, but there are some high-end machines from Dell and others that come close. You also pay a premium for Apple.
For a student an Apple will be probably be more desirable, but a Windows machine will also suffice, albeit with less kudos. My kids have Dell’s, but that’s because I’m a tight arse.
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That was the point I was making right at the top of this thread; pay close to what you’ll pay for a Mac and you’ll get a Windows machine that is every bit as well built as a Mac. As for students and kudos, are you buying a computer or a fashion accessory? Like you say the functional differences between MacOS and Windows are minimal these days especially when for a lot of usage all you need is a browser and a word processor. Good for you buying them Dells, let them pay the Apple premium themselves. That in itself is a good lesson in the value of money 
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This reminded me of an important senior meeting at the university I work at sometimes where the Prof was giving a Powerpoint presentation to some ViPs. He was in full flow when his PC suddenly crashed, rebooted and then showed a screen saying “Windows is installing updates - please wait. Installing update 1 of 47.”
No one said anything and he continued without his slides…
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Just had to like the story.
I am still really surprised that people do not control when updates occur. If you don’t apply a restriction then updates occur as and when they arrive, even if ViPs are being presented to.
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This was a few years ago, probably with windows 7, and updates stacked up in those days until you told them to install. Hence the 47, which was the actual number, not just a guess at remembering on my part.
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There are stories of this happening at hospitals , at very much the wrong time.
Not sure of the veracity , but the ability to close down at the wrong moment led me to Apple.
The only thing I regret is not being able to access certain games . At the moment I would like to play Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered
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I’ve got to buy both my daughters MacBooks now.
I’m planning to buy them from Ebay.
If they have IT problems, will they have no access to help from Apple?
Also, does anyone happen to know how you refit an operating system to a MacBook after you buy it secondhand, and have to presumably reformat the hard disk when you first buy it to get rid of any malware?