Apple created their own filesystem to make this possible.
The system volume is signed by Apple. If the signature on boot doesn't match, it won't boot.
When the system is booted, it's in read-only mode, no way to write anything to it.
If you bork it, you can simply reinstall macOS in place, without any data/application loss at all.
Of course, if you're a tinkerer, you can disable both, the SIP, and the signature validation, but that cannot be done from user-space. You'll need to boot into recovery mode to achieve that.
I don't think there's anything in NTFS or REFS that would allow for this approach. Especially when you account for the wide variety of setups on which an NTFS partition might sit on. With MBR, you're just SOL instantly.
Apple hardware on the other hand has been EFI (GPT) only for at least 15 years.
The system volume is signed by Apple. If the signature on boot doesn't match, it won't boot.
When the system is booted, it's in read-only mode, no way to write anything to it.
If you bork it, you can simply reinstall macOS in place, without any data/application loss at all.
Of course, if you're a tinkerer, you can disable both, the SIP, and the signature validation, but that cannot be done from user-space. You'll need to boot into recovery mode to achieve that.
I don't think there's anything in NTFS or REFS that would allow for this approach. Especially when you account for the wide variety of setups on which an NTFS partition might sit on. With MBR, you're just SOL instantly.
Apple hardware on the other hand has been EFI (GPT) only for at least 15 years.