You'll be able to sell your M4 mac mini in 5 years for $150 for an instant-cash offer from backmarket or any other reseller, while you'd be lucky to get $30 for the equivalent Beelink or BOSGAME after 6 months on ebay.
This reads like the epitome of Apple's reality distortion field. I mean, you're trying to convince yourself that a product is not overpriced when compared to equivalent products and subjecting customers to price gauging by asserting that you might be able to sell it later. That's quite the logical leap.
https://www.cio.com/article/236396/ibm-says-macs-save-up-to-...
These are the dollar numbers claimed in the above post.
Your hypothetical scenario is so absurd you didn't even noticed your catastrophical scenario falls well within any warranty period.
In the meantime, I own cheap miniPCs that I used as daily drivers, and they soldier on for years.
I mean, do you really believe that NUCs from Intel and AMD will simply fall apart if they don't have an Apple sticker on them?
Macs do generally hold their resell value better than PCs, but that doesn’t necessarily have any correlation to usefulness.
I have bought several ThinkCenter small form factor PCs used for about $200 each, and they’ve each been about 5-7 years old. They’re perfectly fine and I can even get new parts from Lenovo, depending on the part and machine. Fantastic deal. They run loads of services in my home.
If you want to put in a bit of elbow grease, you can get a much better deal. M1 Mac Minis in my area are regularly selling for $350+ on FB Marketplace right now.
My macbook pro 15 inch, mid 2017 is valued at $195 by apple trade in. Bought for 2k iirc.
I owned a 2014 MBP (~$1200?) for a long time and as late as 2019 it was resellable for $500.