You seem confused. We replace devices every 5 years about. We generally don't need to touch them between replacements, that includes the current HP units we are running which costs significantly less than a MacBook.

The difference is if we ever need to make a call regarding upgrades the current HP units can be stretched even further with ram and drive upgrades if needed, a MacBook cannot, despite also costing more initially.

All devices get recycled when replaced, if your argument is that the MacBook would be sold to defray costs, well a 5 year old MacBook hasn't held much of its value and we will now need to spend manhours decommissioning second hand MacBooks instead of just ripping out the drives.

I've done this math, Apple is always more expensive unlesd you were going to be buying a workstation spec laptop in the first place and in that case the decision is regarding software compatibility and not hardware.