>Somewhere a kid is saving up for this. He has read every review. Watched the introduction video four or five times. Looked up every spec, every benchmark, every footnote. He has probably walked into an Apple Store and interrogated an employee about it ad nauseam. He knows the consensus. He knows it’s probably not the right tool for everything he wants to do.

Anywhere in the world, the kind of kid that does all this and installs Blender on it is WAY more likely to save up for any janky terrible half-working PC laptop with a bit better specs (memory in particular), or a desktop computer if possible, because A. games B. Linux C. piracy and more software D. he does not care about it being Apple or "just working", in the words of the author himself. I don't know how the US kids in particular feel about this since the reality distortion field is so strong, but anywhere else it's like this.

Depends on the kid’s hobby and purpose of the computer. I’ve always known that MacBooks are better for music making (especially driver hassle, audio signal reliability, etc.). Could I afford a MacBook as my first laptop? No. Did I buy a second-hand MacBook as soon as I could afford it, and have been happy with it since? Yes. As a teenager, I would’ve loved to buy a new MacBook for 500/600€.

I’m sure most other applications are less Mac-optimized, though (software development, 3d/graphics editing, gaming, …).