I set up some Thinkpads from (I think) 2004 to use during Covid when some employees were doing work from home. Replaced the rust drive with an SSD and they used VNC to get onto their work desktops. It's a CAD shop with most everything on the server, so it's not feasible to do WFH with a laptop (not enough grunt, moving data over the Internet is slow), and it made much more sense to just do VNC.

This worked quite well. The Thinkpads were even (just) fast enough to do YouTube.

The point is that it really quite depends on what your workload is. If I made them use AutoCAD on these machines from 2004 they'd quit. This particular workflow was not ideal, but doable.

I have a 2020 M1 MB Air that I would love to replace, but it would be daft to. I don't bump up against any limitations. One of my kids uses my old 2011 MB Pro for his school, which granted I did upgrade to an SSD as well, but even so it's quite usable.

Mac hardware has been pretty consistently good for a very long time. They've had some stinkers (hello MacTV), but otherwise you can usually depend on them.

Like others I'm not thrilled with some of the OS changes, but the alternatives aren't a lot better. Windows keeps shooting itself in the foot, and chasing the Linux desktop is an exercise best left to those young enough to have the patience. I'm so done with distro-hopping.