(I really wish there was a matte screen option at the price point, my old macbook pro was a very expensive mirror and it puts a lot of strain on the eyes to try to concentrate on whats on screen, rather than behind it)
For Dutch people: https://www.smartfolie.com/
A Windows laptop from HP or Lenovo with similar specs/performance won't be cheaper.
Literally just picked up an asus zephyrs g15 15.6" with 2560 x 1440QHD 165 hz refresh rate, AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS, 16GB Memory, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and 1 Tb ssd for $1850 at Best Buy, then picked up 2x16gb DDR4 3200 MHz for $150 off Amazon to upgrade to 32gb.
Weight is a little over 4 lbs. (4.1lbs)
Total cost: $2000
Other than that yes MacBooks are expensive. But so are HP EliteBooks or Lenovo ThinkPads.
What's your point. Of course you can get a laptop with lesser specs from a cheaper manufacturer for less, especially if you upgrade it yourself after the fact.
But if you price a Thinkpad P series of HP ZBook with 64GB RAM, 2TB storage, and similar GPU/CPU performance, you are looking at $4000. I know because I have one.
Anyways that's the beauty of PCs, you don't have to pay the exorbitant prices or the OEM if you don't want to, a Lenovo P15 will allow you to swap the RAM and SSD however you want and it takes 5 minutes and like 9 screws.