Re: Still, at least you can now eat ...
Price?
Oh, you must be self employed and only looking at this month's bankroll - my employer bought a laptop for me to use, and compared with the overall cost of employing someone... it's barely even a rounding error.
For them, buying me a laptop which should last me many years makes sense; and for me it's sufficiently unix to just do my job, and sufficiently "just works" that I don't have to spend time fettling it (well, except for the AV software which we are required to have, that stumped me, IT, and the AV vendor for a good while) as I used to with linux workstations (I do miss ion3 as a window manager though).
It's not a show of wealth, it's consumer electronics at a reasonable price for something that IT, and I, expect to last well. That's the BIG problem... these key switches didn't last well, they barely lasted.... and that's a major fail.
The failure to admit there was a problem, or to replace at reasonable cost (initially should have been zero)... also a major fail. I can't recall seeing anywhere that they have reimbursed people who had paid for repairs before they publicly acknowledged the problem.
Catalina "just works" for me. I haven't had any issues with it at all.
Yes, 32 bit only software won't run - that was entirely expected, and had been advertised for a long while. I still run an 8 bit game on Catalina occasionally.
To be honest the keyboard on the laptop sees relatively little use because I'm usually at a desk, and always drop my BT keyboard and trackpad in the bag as well as the laptop. So it's only ever used when I move to a sofa, or on the bus/plane.