I don't know why you're downvoted. No matter how many feel-good anecdotes the author tacks to their article, to me the premise appears a strawman. It would have been entirely possible to make pretty much all the same points about just getting a used Thinkpad, or anything really.

My first laptop as a kid was a passed-down business Toshiba that was to be scrapped. I then bought a soldering iron to fabricate a serial dongle in order to reset the BIOS password that was locking it down, and then installed Xubuntu on it. Guess young me shoulda gotten a Macbook instead to inspire the true spirit of freedom and exploration?

It's an old and persuasive myth of the Apple community that of course it's not about the tool, but what you do with it creatively. Still, they never fail to mention how the tool being an Apple is important in one way or another. I just don't get it.