Getting a macbook is cheaper than it has ever been. You can get a new m4 macbook air for around 750 on amazon. The prices of apple laptops have been dropping every year despite inflation in the rest of the economy....

Still lots of cash, versus a 400 euro laptop, which is what many regular people end up buying.

There is a reason so many European operators have contract offers for TV or Internet packages, where customers get Apple gear "for free", naturally with a several years bound contracts.

Before memory prices skyrocketed, you could buy a 8c/16t Ryzen laptop and max it out with 64GB of memory and 2TB+ of disk space for less than $500.

Did that with the HP Dev One a few years ago, just did it again with a replacement sans memory that I already have.

You can get a dell laptop for like $200.

Yes, prices have gone down over the years, but still unaffordable by people who can afford less.

Don't get me wrong, MacOS graphics, aesthetics, GUI, are awesome and I like its consistency but there are cons, too.

They typically have a higher upfront cost, limited upgrades, fewer ports/software options, repair challenges.

For comparisons, I purchased an Acer Helios 300, three or four years with the following specs:

The Acer Predator Helios 300 Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 Memory: 16 GB RAM Storage: 512 GB SSD Display: 15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS ComfyView Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX 20xx.

I upgraded the machine's drives, to three, run Windows on the 500GB SSD drive, Linux on a 2TB M.2 drive and have a 4TB storage drive.

This is not something that I could do on a MacOS without a significant price upgrade. As such, I would say that MacOS is restrictive as far as hardware upgrade, and price. It's just Eye Candy for most people.