Because it tends to last for 2-3 times as long and still holds resale value when you finally choose to upgrade.
Because of this, entry-level Macs are often actually cheaper in the long run -- and with the M chips they're faster too. And of course generally provide a much higher-quality experience, like trackpad quality, screen quality, etc.
[citation needed] Lot of bold claims there about longevity.
You also forgot "still holds resale value until they drop support for your model in macOS, and then software stops supporting the macOS version you're able to run"
Yeah until they die because the not changeable SSDs has reached their cycles.
I see many old ThinkPads still humming in the university library, but not many old macs.
Extraordinarily few people reach the cycle limit of the SSD on their Mac. That's not something to worry about for probably 99.999% of people, so it's just a weird thing to bring up.
And how do you know you're not seeing many old MacBooks? The MBA was launched over a decade and a half ago and it still looks almost identical to a casual observer.
You may be thinking of the bugs that were present in the very first generation of M1s, that caused them to erroneously display a wear level much higher than they were actually experiencing.
And as long as you have the Silver color option, a MacBook Air from 2023 looks very much like a MacBook Air from 2014 if you're not stopping and looking closely at it.
If you have one of the colored ones, those date back to 2018 with, again, a very similar design to today's.
Except there aren't reports of that. Just tried googling and couldn't find anything about SSD failure actually happening. What I did find was some fearmongering back in 2021 about whether it might become a thing, but it seems like it was entirely hypothetical and never actually happened.
Also the M1 has only been around for a little over 3 years. They can't be dying after 4 years because they're not that old.
Where are you getting all this misinformation from? And why are you motivated to be repeating it?
Because of this, entry-level Macs are often actually cheaper in the long run -- and with the M chips they're faster too. And of course generally provide a much higher-quality experience, like trackpad quality, screen quality, etc.