For the Mac Mini? The Apple Silicon line has always been a really good value for the CPU, compared to similar performance from Intel and AMD. The upcharge on RAM and storage basically made it break even somewhere around 1 or 2 upgrades, if you were looking for a comparable CPU/GPU.

For my purposes the M1 Mac Mini was cheaper than anything I was looking at for a low power/quiet home server, back in 2021, through some random Costco coupon for $80 off the base $599 configuration. A little more CPU than I needed, and a little less RAM than I would've preferred, but it was fine.

Plus having official Mac hardware allows me to run a Bluebubbles server and hack Backblaze pricing (unlimited data backup for any external storage you can hook up to a Mac), so that was a nice little bonus compared to running a Linux server.

On their laptops, they're kinda cost competitive if you're looking for high dpi laptop screens, and there's just not really a good comparison for that CPU/GPU performance for power. If you don't need or want those things then Macs aren't a good value, but if you are looking for those things the other computer manufacturers aren't going to be offering better value.