Yes, Apple did finally fix the awful keyboards on its laptops from 2016-2020, and their keyboards are once again quite good. The trackpad is what it has always been: the best on any computer at any price.
I'm not aware that Apple offers any kind of on-site warranty service, so that's a no, but the flipside is that you are much less likely to need it than you are with PCs. (Please, spare me the endless downvotes for saying this. I support hundreds of PCs and hundreds of Macs, and have for a couple decades now. I'm not just making this shit up for my health.)
Lets not promise the moon here. The M1's Linux support is far from complete and definitely not ready for general use.
I always bring a mouse, I hate the little nubs even more :)
Apple products (top case stickers notwithstanding) are fungible: just buy another one from any Apple store in the universe and restore your backup, and let AppleCare deal with the busted one on their own schedule.
There’s nothing special about your laptop except the data. The factory pumps out bazillions of them.
> Apple products ... just buy another one
I think you answered your own question. Buying a new laptop every time something is broken is expensive. Lenovo offers quite cheap extended warranty plus the next-day repair is great. (EU: I paid less then 50E for another year of warranty after the original 2 years)
I actually did this once and tried to submit a warranty support on day 1 of buying the new warranty and was turned down, but they called me about a week later saying they would waive the 30 days and ended up doing about $500 in repairs for $130 cost of the new warranty.
(the other condition is that you are only allowed one accidental repair event per year)
I doubt there are nearly as many people on HN making even one entry level Ford Focus a month in salary.
Along a similar line of reasoning, I totally understand if Coca-Cola bans soft drinks from Pepsi on campus. But I would be much less understanding of Ford banning non-Ford cars in their employee parking lots.
So will the Genius Bar. (If they don't, Apple has a 14 day return policy, so you can borrow anything they sell for free for two weeks.)
I need my laptop to work. If it doesn't work, I can't work. If I can't work, I'm not getting paid. That's why "next business day" is important.
My laptop contains sensitive data. Data which is encrypted at rest, but which I'm nevertheless not going to ship to goodness knows where, for goodness knows how long. That's one reason why "on site" is important. The other is that I paid a lot of money for a piece of hardware; I'm not going to faf about looking for some Apple Store (of which very few exist in my country).
Lenovo charges ~15% of the purchase price for 3 year NBDOS support, which is very much worth every cent. Tech shows up, replaces $part, leaves, and I can get back to work.
I'm the exact same way, which is why I have 4. Next business day is way too far away.