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You’re not entirely wrong, in that the Apple Tax is real.

Nonetheless, the quality of the Magic Keyboard is substantially higher than that of a keyboard you can get for “few dollars”

Ultimately, your assertion was:

An iPad Air costs the same but comes with a much better M4 processor. The main difference is a less crap operating system in macOS.

An iPad Air with a keyboard that matches the form factor and build quality of a MacBook Neo does not actually cost the same, it costs an additional $270.

To a degree, yeah.

The laptop form factor is engineered with lid and palmrest assemblies, if you’re going to compare the two then you’ll want to add a nice keyboard to that iPad. Apple’s is $270.

Memory utilization is relative to the user though. For someone who wants to do nothing more than check their email and manage online banking, no specs matter (well, within reason, but people do use Chromebooks with 4GB RAM)

Just because such a system would not be suitable for your use-case does not mean that it is not suitable for any use case.

The iPhone 16 Pro is a very capable device, yet it “only” has 8GB of RAM. We don’t have the full picture for these new devices, but it’s possible that Apple will be handling memory in a similar manner to iOS, making it possible to do more with less.

Repairing broken hinges on such a cheap laptop practically has to be a DIY repair. I get this exact repair inquiry every now and then, the owner often balks when the repair cost is more than 50% what they paid for the device. For these low-end laptops, I also find that parts are usually less available than those for most Apple devices. Apple tends to use certain part designs / assemblies for multiple generations. Apple stuff is consistent enough that there are plenty of used parts available aftermarket.

Far as your repair scenario is concerned, I can only think of 2-3 times where a Mac came in with hinge related failure and those cases all stemmed from abuse like opening the lid too far / egregious mishandling. Meanwhile, I’ve bread lots of butter with HP laptops whose hinges break through regular operation.

If something costs more to fix but only breaks 1% as often, are you really saving money by purchasing the cheaper solution with the higher fail rate?

There’s more to a computer than RAM (or even ither specs), comparing what’s shown in the article to the low-cost option you linked the two systems are leagues apart in terms of build quality.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the battery life was miles apart too.

That cheap plastic HP laptop is destined to have its hinge mounts snap away from the upper palmrest through normal day-to-day use.