The M1 Mac Mini with 16 GB RAM is $859 in the US and 1029€ in a generic European country (Germany).

In my opinion that's pretty competitive.

The bit that I’ve been impressed by is the life span. Machines used every day for 8-13 years and still ok. The amount of pain they cause due to various bits of software beginning to fail and workarounds being required obviously grows, and the security side of things isn’t great either. But the machines end up rather cost effective when spread over that many years.

Not sure about minis but that was true for macbooks ten years ago, when you could easily upgrade memory, storage and batteries, and you could install a recent and fully working linux distro when apple stopped supporting you. That unfortunately hasn't been true for a while. My mid 2010 MBP is still perfectly usable, I don't expect my M1 air to last more than a couple, maybe half a dozen years.

€1029 is for 8 GB version. For 16GB RAM/512 GB SSD, it is the €1259. I've checked before posting ;)

€1029 is both for the 8/512 or the 16/256. The latter would be my choice for a dev (well, actually IS, that's what I got in my Air).

The services to manage Windows Clients aren’t free either.

The costs are in setting up the whole infrastructure for managing and supporting a new class of devices.

> The services to manage Windows Clients aren’t free either.

Yes, but unless you are a new or very small company, they were already paid.

> The costs are in setting up the whole infrastructure for managing and supporting a new class of devices.

Exactly.