Too late to edit my post but wanted to apologise for causing confusion.

I suppose "cheapest" can be a very subjective term if the comparison is between things with different capabilities.

NVIDIA is a cheaper option than AMD only if you compare assume you want/need the fast networking NVIDIA are bundling with their system. According to the article the NIC would add $1500-$2000 to the price of another systems. I also failed to account for the extra memory bandwidth offered by M4 max. The apple system costs more but if you want/need that bandwidth then it's the cheapest of the three.

I guess "the system has a niche where it offers very good price/performance" is what I should have said. Not as snappy though.