I feel for you, but your expectations are out of whack with reality. Any Windows laptop, properly maintained, is a reasonably secure device.
You can "restore" "reasonable" security to your Mac even in the almost unthinkable light of a possible actually available exploit, that can be reasonably be expected to affect you personally, by using a strong filevault password. Maybe you want to add a tripwire (file integrity) check at boot time, or a manual check when you mount any drive.
No, the precedent you ask for does not exist. In fact, the opposite is true.
Actually, in my country the consumer culture is extremely different to America. Consumers are not left high and dry if a manufacturer screws them over or was incompetent (such as design defects). Remedies are on sliding scales commensurate with the situation.
This is probably partially why I'm getting downvoted. Cultural differences. Americans are not aware of what's possible when things are actually fair for the consumer. They're used to 'tough luck' culture.
Upon further reading, I'm concluding this might not be a massive problem with other precautions in place, but the valid discussion point still remains. If a manufacturer designs a product which turns out to have a problem caused to the consumer which breaches reasonable expectations of its usability, and either needs repairing / recalling / replacing / refunding, many countries offer resource to the consumer. Under this principle, I wonder about unpatchable hardware security defects which cause a major problem...it needs to be explored more.
Apple never sold you an unhackable laptop. It isn't cultural differences, it's simply that you weren't lied to and your hardware didn't stop being "fit for purpose".
From their ad copy -
"Every MacBook Pro is equipped with the Apple T2 Security Chip — our second‑generation custom Mac silicon designed to make everything you do even more secure. It includes a Secure Enclave coprocessor that powers Touch ID and provides the foundation for secure boot and encrypted storage capabilities. It also consolidates many discrete controllers, including the system management controller, audio controller, and SSD controller, into one."
Firstly, let's make it clear that we are now talking about broad concepts and not necessarily how it applies to the example of this situation at hand.
Under many jurisdictions' consumer laws, advertised features or promises by the manufacturer are not everything that they are legally held to. There is also statutory warranty, and other parts of consumer law, which can include rules on basic expectations of how that category of consumer item is expected to perform (I'm not talking CPU speeds, but major issues like a keyboard fundamentally not working at a reasonable success rate), how long it's reasonably expected to work without failing (for that category of item), and so on.
Very broad principles, but with some clear examples provided by consumer bodies to consumers, and it's reviewed on a case by case basis. You can bring it to the proverbial small claims court (or consumer complaint body), and they can review the claim.
I suppose I just won't bring up this matter to HN before. It's too alien to the US consumer situation and mustn't apply to most readers here.
You can "restore" "reasonable" security to your Mac even in the almost unthinkable light of a possible actually available exploit, that can be reasonably be expected to affect you personally, by using a strong filevault password. Maybe you want to add a tripwire (file integrity) check at boot time, or a manual check when you mount any drive.
No, the precedent you ask for does not exist. In fact, the opposite is true.