The bit that I’ve been impressed by is the life span. Machines used every day for 8-13 years and still ok. The amount of pain they cause due to various bits of software beginning to fail and workarounds being required obviously grows, and the security side of things isn’t great either. But the machines end up rather cost effective when spread over that many years.
Not sure about minis but that was true for macbooks ten years ago, when you could easily upgrade memory, storage and batteries, and you could install a recent and fully working linux distro when apple stopped supporting you. That unfortunately hasn't been true for a while. My mid 2010 MBP is still perfectly usable, I don't expect my M1 air to last more than a couple, maybe half a dozen years.
In my opinion that's pretty competitive.