My 2c: I meet people all the time using the same Macbooks for 5+ years. While I'm attracted to modularity, SoCs have undeniable advantages (I'm assuming other commenters will cover this). I bought the fanless MB Air because I imagine this thing could probably go for a decade without any repair, outside the battery. I'd say this longevity is worthy of praise.

For contrast, I used a Surface Book throughout college and within weeks of the warranty expiring I ran into serious issues with the battery, then the charging port, display backlight, fan. I loved it to death so I kept it on life support and changed my usage patterns until I gave up on it. And yes, my next device was a used Thinkpad, and I was able to fix most issues I ran into. But I'd

I am NOT a fan of the measures Apple takes to monopolize the maintenance and repair of their devices.

I’m still using my M1 MacBook from 6 years ago. My company keeps emailing me to upgrade to the newest one but everything works perfectly fine and the performance is more than adequate for dev work.

Compared to pre-Apple silicon I was getting company exemptions to upgrade before I was technically allowed.

M series Macs are just amazing devices.