I didn't think PCs were part of the "pandemic surge" like Peleton was. If that was true then surely we should see a similar drop in MacBook sales. Do we have any figures on that?
During the pandemic, some of my company's Lenovo laptop orders were backlogged by weeks (or months for a brief period). We had difficulty obtaining laptops for remote employees, even when lowering requirements to "Anything reasonably suitable".
At the same time MacBook Pro's did not have significant changes in order times. I suspect this is because that for large corps, Macs are not as prevalent as Windows laptops. More "specialist" less "commodity".
Personally, I have 10 year old Macs still usable. This message comes from a 2012 MacMini - laptop level hardware. Equivalent age Windows laptops are either Linux (which is also not as corporate common) or our of service.
Some of that is surely profit, but some does seem to pay for engineering and part selection of things and methods that don't suck and don't self destruct 2 months past the warranty end date.
Yes, also why the corp waited on those Lenovo orders rather than switching some developers to Macs.