No surprises here. Just like the lockdown on iPhone screen and part replacements, Macbooks suffer from the same Apple’s anti-repair and anti-consumer bullshit. Battery glued, ssd soldered in and can’t even swap parts with other official parts. 6000$ laptop and you don’t even own it.
I don’t like Apple very much but it would be stupid to not admit that their new M1 and M2 SOCs aren’t great. Their battery efficiency far surpasses any from Intel or AMD and the performance is great.
I think MacOS looks stupid though, I mean, it looks like fucking Gnome.
I assume most people that buy Macs and iphones do it for their software and hardware, not because they want to appear wealthy. Like you said OS is a personal preference and some prefer MacOS and iOS.
Unfortunately most people don’t care.
And once you are locked-in, the barrier to get yourself out of it is often so high that it dissuades most people from even trying to get out. I moved from macOS to Linux last year, and even though I was only using a small portion of the Apple ecosystem (iCloud was the only thing I believe), it still took a lot of time as they are designed to make it difficult/time consuming to migrate. Not to mention the macOS/iOS only applications you might’ve ended up using, as cross-platform functionality was not top-of-mind when choosing. In my case, the notes app Bear was such an example.