We buy refurb MacBook pros. Our specs are 256g ssd, 16g memory, hexcore + Applecare. We buy 15in machines because the vast majority of the company wanted 15in machines and I'm barely going to put the brain juice in to support one line of machines let alone two.

You're paying around $2.2/2.5k a piece. We buy 1 or 2 every month depending on hiring or whenever I find someone who has a machine like the one you describe (128g/8g ew).

Similar x1 carbon off amazon is maybe $1.2k with taxs, no apple care.

Say we buy 15 in a year, math:

Apple/applecare = $2.5k * 15 = $37.5k

Lenovo = $1.2k * 15 = $18k + say $50kish for a decent help desk employee because there's no way in hell I'm working 60 hour weeks on product AND dealing with laptops beyond, 'run diagnostics and take it to the apple store.'

The value proposition isn't hard. We're going with the MacBook Pros. For the grand total of 5 people who have to have windows for reasons we just run bootcamp.