> A machine that's 100% utilized (even worse if it's in bursts) will last less than an idle machine.

How much though? Say I have three Mac Minis next to each other, one that is completely idle but on, one that bursts 100% CPU every 10 minutes and one that uses 100% CPU all the time, what's the difference on how long the machines survives? Months, years or decades?

Not appreciably, and not before a 5-yr AppleCare+ warranty expires.

Out of our >3000 currently active Apple Silicon Macs, failures due to non-physical damage are in the single digits per year. Of those, none have been from production systems with 24/7 uptime and continuous high load, which reflects your parenthetical.

Perhaps we haven't met the other end of the bathtub curve yet, but we also won't be retaining any of these very far beyond their warranty period, much less the end of their support life.

I think the point of this is more "use the machine you have at home" than "do a TCO analysis and see if it's profitable", though. People like to keep their machines working for longer, generally.

> Not appreciably, and not before a 5-yr AppleCare+ warranty expires.

It’s three years for Macs, though I believe you can pay annually for longer. Five has never been a thing to my knowledge.

AppleCare+ annual is perpetual as long as you keep paying it (and Apple offers to switch to that when your 3-year lump sum expires if you choose that instead). I’m guessing it ends whenever they officially discontinue hardware support, which has traditionally been about 7 years after the last unit is produced, but I haven’t reached that yet to know for sure.