The option is to buy it fully specced. A new 6-core i9 with 32 gigs of DDR4 amd 4TB of flash storage will probably keep you happy for the next 5 years. That means your budget is slightly above US$ 1200/year of happy computing with a Mac.
If you don't need macOS or an ultra-elegant thin computer with an incredible screen, you'll probably be happier with a PC from Dell or Lenovo with similar specs and an updated machine every 2 years. But they are neither elegant, nor thin. At least they run Linux very well.
My current personal laptop is 4.5 years old and I am now considering replacing it with a machine with specs similar to the PC I described - non-thin, non-elegant, decent-but-not-incredible screen, a non-bleeding-edge CPU, as much memory as possible, some flash storage and a hard disk and I don't expect to upgrade it in less than 5 years.
If happy computing includes trips to the Apple Store every few months because the keyboard got stuck... Again... Maybe. If happy computing means no physical escape or function keys... Maybe. If happy computing means no warranty after 3 years... Maybe. If happy computing means no accidental damage warranty whatsoever... Maybe. If happy computing means an oleophobic coating that will almost definitely fail at least once over the lifetime of the device... Maybe. If happy computing involves not being able to access the data on that 4TB SSD when the laptop bricks itself, necessitating constant backups... Maybe. If happy computing involves knowingly spending double the price of the storage and the RAM otherwise because Apple knows that you won't be able to replace them... Maybe.
But hey, it's thin and light and aluminum, so all is forgiven, right? Don't get me wrong, the MBP is a pretty gorgeous device, but it's pretty hilarious to say that all is good and well just because it's thin and light and aluminum.
> The option is to buy it fully specced. A new 6-core i9 with 32 gigs of DDR4 amd 4TB of flash storage will probably keep you happy for the next 5 years. That means your budget is slightly above US$ 1200/year of happy computing with a Mac.
The problem is that not everyone has the budget to buy a fully-speced machine at the time of initial purchase. Also, many laptop vendors charge a significant premium to buy such configurations.
Apple partly solves this by simply not even selling the low-speced "base model" that other vendors would advertise. But still, buying low/mid-range now and upgrading later can be significantly more tolerable on the wallet than going-for-broke every major upgrade cycle.
The lack of upgradability on the newer machines is a real turn off.