You raise some good points which I'm still considering, so I'm not 100% committed to Mac just yet.
I'm not bothered about gaming anymore, certainly not on a laptop anyway, and the virus story isn't a concern anymore since there aren't any mechanical drives in any new Macs. But I share your Dad's frustrations about general usage: a lot of MacOS conventions are just *weird* after a lifetime of using Windows, and it's hard to undo all those expectations and muscle memory and learn it new, especially when we're older.
You're right about the bloody ports and dongles. Honestly, that's one thing that really winds me up. The M1 Macbook Air only has 2 Thunderbolt/USB-C + one 3.5mm headphone jack. That's very limited, and has made me consider the 14" Pro instead which has much better ports. But that adds £hundreds to the price which I can't really justify.
I think my main issue is that Macs are very expensive compared to Windows PCs/laptops, and I'm still unsure if the extra money is worth it for an everyday machine. But... the M1 Macs need fewer resources to do the same thing. Everything I've read suggests that an 8GB Mac M1 is equivalent to a 16GB Windows machine, so overall, maybe the costs work out the same.
One thing I hadn't realised is that one of my requirements is to have a *quiet* machine. So many Windows laptops are OK when idling, but as soon as you do anything vaguely taxing, the fans kick in and can be verrrry loud and annoying. The M1 Macbook Air is passively cooled sot it's completely silent, and the Pro 14" and 16" have fans but are so well optimised you barely hear them if they do spin up. I'm in a new job and have been given a 16" M1 MacBook Pro -- it has been completely silent so far, which could not be said for that Framework thing that I bought: the fans kicked in on that during startup and stayed like that for a good 10 mins even though I wasn't doing anything! Of course, my 2015 Macbook Pro does have fans and it does get loud if you push it, but I'm not doing anything on it that's taxing enough to cause that.
Another consideration is that my phone is Android not iPhone which means missing on some good integrations. That's likely not an issue though as I only connect my phone to my computers when I do basic file transfers, which is supported everywhere.
Right now I'm waiting to get my money back on the Framework laptop that I sent back. Once I've got that refund, I'll consider my options. I may just end up sticking with my current MacBook Pro and desktop setup for now (although one of the main points of this was to go fully "mobile" and get rid of the desktop machine entirely -- it takes up too much space and limits me to using the home-office all the time, when I'd rather move around the house depending on my mood).
And yet... after all that, I *still* can't stop watching YouTube PC builders putting together these amazing tiny ITX PCs which for some reason really appeal to me, even though I don't have any need for one...!