Are you an "Executive" Member and using a Costco-branded credit card, to get their pumped-up cash back %?
This seems like a rather superficial discussion of a very interesting question. It doesn't discuss factors such as price or custom configurations of MacBooks, for example. Perhaps someone at Ars Technica could give us a better analysis.
the 3 month return policy..
Heck. That's more or less the Apple new product "upgrade" cycle window ...
... buy, use, return, upgrade, repeat :)
Since when? Their phones and some tablets are annual. Some computer models are annual now, but not all. The Mac Pro was famously stuck for 4 years, and the current version is 2 years old this summer.