Honestly, I didn't bother making a better case for why I wouldn't want a $6,000 laptop in large part because the nerve people have to argue that theft isn't a concern at all made me stubborn. Theft is one reason, but a laptop is also a hell of a lot easier to simply break or lose than a desktop that is permanently installed somewhere, and a desktop is more upgradable and repairable, with typically much more I/O.
Today's baseline laptops are really good as it is. 32-64 GiB of RAM is plenty, and at least on PC laptops you can do it fairly cheaply. Apple has been a consistent year or two ahead in mobile CPU performance but it fell out of my consideration ever since I realized the M1 and 7040 were both very sufficient for any local computation I cared about. (I'm not going to say I'd specifically go for less efficiency or performance, but it has become significantly lower priority over other things like repairability.)
Not really specifically hating on Apple, here. If I was going to get another Mac it'd be a Mac Mini or Mac Studio probably, ideally with a third-party SSD upgrade to both save on costs and get a slight bit of extra drive performance too. I've definitely considered it, even though I am very far from an Apple fan, just due to the superior value and efficiency they have in many categories.
Today's baseline laptops are really good as it is. 32-64 GiB of RAM is plenty, and at least on PC laptops you can do it fairly cheaply. Apple has been a consistent year or two ahead in mobile CPU performance but it fell out of my consideration ever since I realized the M1 and 7040 were both very sufficient for any local computation I cared about. (I'm not going to say I'd specifically go for less efficiency or performance, but it has become significantly lower priority over other things like repairability.)
Not really specifically hating on Apple, here. If I was going to get another Mac it'd be a Mac Mini or Mac Studio probably, ideally with a third-party SSD upgrade to both save on costs and get a slight bit of extra drive performance too. I've definitely considered it, even though I am very far from an Apple fan, just due to the superior value and efficiency they have in many categories.