> It's mostly overpriced shit wrapped in a nice cellophane.

That's orthogonal to the concept of a Veblen good. A Veblen good can very much be shit wrapped in cellophane.

The core trait of a Veblen good is that customers buy it as a status symbol. Also, being overpriced contributes to reduce the number of those who can afford to buy one.

Apple products have always been status symbols and this Macbook is no different.

One could easily put together a significantly more powerful Linux desktop for a lower price. This has always been the case, but Apple's marketing tries to convince you otherwise. Honestly, I've always been surprised by how effectively their marketing has misled the tech-savvy crowd on HN.

You can’t simply swap OSX for Linux. I heavily use accessibility tools that are just not comparable on Linux. These tools probably cost more than the laptop, even though Apple include it in the OS.