There's nothing unfair about fans. They're not new technology and apple is allowed to use them too. And they do, in a way that is barely noticeable. If you do it right it's fine.
Apple DOES use them and Microsoft chose not to compare their product to the MacBook Pro clearly because it wouldn't have benefited them to do so
"There's nothing wrong with fans" -- sure nothing wrong with them as long as you don't mind the extra noise, energy usage, point of failure and an entry point for dust and other crap into your laptop.
Give me a break! Passive cooling is the future for personal computing.
But as you point out, apple does have fans and in the m-series laptops they're done in such a way that they're nearly silent, or off. So, they really do not contribute meaningfully to noise, energy, or failure. They help with the burst workloads that a PC may encounter. Designing a PC to require the fan always be on is a sign of inefficient design, but designing a PC to specifically avoid a fan is to just let your competition beat you.
