What makes you say this? Have you speced two systems lately? Last I did, the MacBook was comparable to cheaper for the price/performance. Of course, a 10lb mobile desktop with a 30 minute battery was closest.
What comparable notebook do you have in mind?
It seems crazy to me that in 2023 Apple offer a £2,699.00 laptop with just 512Gb of non-upgradable storage.
Looking at Dell's Precision line bundled with Ubuntu, they might be user upgradable but they're still roughly a similar ball park to Apple price wise.
Personally I'm going to need to see some full package benchmarks before I can form an opinion and will be weeping either way.
The PC industry uses wildly inflated prices, especially MSRP. A more realistic price for laptops can be found on various deal sites. A comparable Dell, Lenovo, or HP laptop will cost about .5-.6 of the equivalent macbook pro price. The vast majority of laptops, even after accounting for 1-2 TB of storage and 32 GB RAM cost less than $1.5k. MBPs start around $2k.
I’ve actually been considering an M1 MBP from a deal site in the UK. They seem to be about £300 off MSRP at the moment.
I think the other 364 days of the year are more relevant, since Black Friday sales often have extremely limited quantities, and are anything it predictable.
People are claiming 4-6 hours on the hidpi display version. That’s definitely not comparable. I leave my charger at home with my M1.
I disagree. The whole package should be compared, because that's what you're paying for. If 2x battery life cost a few hundred more, it's a no brainer, for me.
edit: We're out of reply depth, but this all started with "they're ridiculously expensive" and ended with "there's nothing else in the market".
The complete package is reasonably priced, when compared to other systems. If you completely ignore one part of the package, then sure, you can find something comparable, as my initial comment pointed out with the portable desktop replacements.
But the price on the shelf is for the complete package.