When purchasing any ARM based computer a key question for me, is how many of those can I purchase for the cost of a Mac mini, and how many Mac mini can I purchase for the cost of that, and does that have working drivers...

And the answer there may absolutely be "none", which equates to doing away with ARM, which is totally fine. I don't have a horse in the x86 vs ARM race, especially since it's pretty clear that performance per watt stands within a narrow margin across arches on recent nodes.