> It's not quite the same as the old Intel based generation, where they were more like premium/well built machines with good screens and hardware.

Not sure what generation you're talking about? Intel c. 18-25 years ago was wildly ahead on everything, much more so than Apple is now, in fact.[1] Apple Computer, quite famously, straight up abandoned their previous CPU architecture and started shipping Intel chips just to have something competitive in the market.

Again, everything goes in cycles in this industry and Apple's executive decisionmaking is 100% not placing bets on being the best forever just to make a bunch of Linux nerds happy.

[1] Process innovation mattered more at the time, where now we're hitting the scaling limit and chips are much more comparable.