I bought my first 15" MBP in 2006 after Apple switched to Intel. I was a student back then and I got it for about 1800 EUR. It was a beautiful machine, I could replace the battery myself without unscrewing anything, and if I wanted to upgrade the memory or HDD I could do that easily.

Now here we are 12 years and a couple of Macs later. The current MBP is a bit more beautiful than the first one I got, it's noticeably thinner, the trackpad is bigger, but that's pretty much it. The rest is just technological advancements that have happened to the whole industry line-up of laptops (faster CPU, more RAM, SSDs, USB3, USB-C, Thunderbolt). And for that I now have to pay nearly double the price of my first MBP.

I think the sales people have taken control over Apple again. It just feels natural to look for an alternative at this point.

The really sad part is that Apple software, which is vastly superior to all competitors from my perspective, is no longer accessible for certain people due to the price hikes. I had hoped that Apple would take another path this time. They seem to have forgotten their decline during the 90s.