I'm not going lie, Steve, I am really, really happy with my Mac. I'm almost 'afraid' to say it out loud to the hubby (= very anti Apple but also hates Windows and Android, so...) fearing the bubble might burst but it is true.
You're right though they are f****in expensive. Since you cannot upgrade them e.g. stick in more RAM later, I opted to max everything, 24 GB RAM and 2 TB disk. It was a hefty extra but this is a one time change and I didn't want to regret it due to specs.
Thanks for the Liotes vote 😍