If that’s true, I haven’t found it when I’ve shopped for a laptop to install Linux onto. This wasn’t always the case, but right around the time of Windows 8 when everything needed a touchscreen and chromebooks were eating the low end of the market, good affordable hardware seemingly disappeared. I would have to spend $1500 to get something in the same ballpark as an entry level MacBook and it would still have profoundly terrible touchpad (whether running Linux or Windows, it never mattered), a mediocre keyboard, a plastic body, and noisy fans.
Chromebooks do offer better hardware per dollar than other computers, but you are (or perhaps were) pretty locked-into the ChromeOS, or at least none of the workarounds seemed palatable. So if you like ChromeOS then there is better value hardware out there, but Mac is it for the rest of us.
There is a lot of competition in the laptop space now. Apple no longer produces hands down the best notebooks in terms of hardware. The touchpad on the new Lenovo/Dell laptops have gotten very very good. Same goes for screen quality.
Chromebooks do offer better hardware per dollar than other computers, but you are (or perhaps were) pretty locked-into the ChromeOS, or at least none of the workarounds seemed palatable. So if you like ChromeOS then there is better value hardware out there, but Mac is it for the rest of us.