Apple have made major improvements to their laptop microphones in the last few years. On cameras, while they’re usually very bad right now, laptop cameras will never be great; there’s just no room for the optics in the lid. No laptop has had a lid as thick as a phone in decades.
> No laptop has had a lid as thick as a phone in decades
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I feel like this is a bit much of an exaggeration. I just measured my Pixel 3 (at its thickest point, the camera lens) and a 2011 Macbook Pro (including the rubber bumper, admittedly, but those were super slim at the time), and the MBP is only ~2mm thinner than the Pixel. The race for ultra-thin laptops seems like a relatively recent thing to me.
