I want to buy a 16" M1 Max because it looks awesome...but my base-model 13" M1 is a beast of a machine and I use it every day for dev work. It has only 8gb of ram but it still chews through everything. And I got it for a great price brand new considering how much I've been using it since launch. In my own experience so far, if I buy that expensive 16" M1 Max it will be because I want it.

Note that I've had Dell XPS laptops that were configured with the same price point as a Macbook and while nice...those devices definitely didn't have the same attention to quality that I've experienced with Apple products. So it seems unfair to make such a broad criticism against Apple users at large!