I wonder how long it'll take for something like a Raspberry Pi to ship with 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage... for < $100.
Whats the bigger likelihood, RAM manufacturers minimal offering > 8GB or SSD manufacturers minimal offering > 25GB?
Not really relevant for the Rasp, since the storage is whatever you want it to be. It's currently $80 for an 8GB RAM Pi 5, and SSDs are dirt cheap now.
The only reason Apple can get away with scamming their customers into believing that AS is some magic voodoo chip is down to most consumers not having a clue that they're using swap memory.
So many are quick to simply slam intel Macs for being worse with the same RAM, when in reality AS is only performing better due to everything being embedded on the chip and it's immediate vicinity. It's non upgradeable, soldered, planned obsolescence chip.
When you have everything so close, the latency for swap memory is extremely low. Unless you're doing something demanding, which someone using an 8GB Air is not, then you won't ever notice it. Swap memory is more than capable for quick iMovie edits while scrolling Insta and watching YouTube at the same time.
The reason any normal PC or non AS Mac suffer when they use swap memory is due to how far everything is from the CPU. There's a lot more latency and the storage is more variable too. BUT.... You can literally upgrade your 8GB of RAM in a PC to 32GB for like $40-50 these days. You'll never need to use swap. You somehow utilise that 32GB, and if you were smart by getting 2x 16GB sticks... you simply add another 32GB for $40-50.
I know a lot of people who've upgraded or bought new PCs lately that add 64GB of RAM for no reason other than it costs so little they don't care if all they actually need is 16GB. I wish we lived in a world where Apple weren't the way they are, but they know that many professionals (even if they don't strictly need MacOS) will continue to stump up the $$$ for a measly extra 8GB or 24GB of RAM.
I completely understand that most people don't want to spend the small amount of time needed to learn and understand hardware, and subsequently software especially if that involves Windows and Linux. I just wish that for a single generation people would stop throwing money at Apple based on the false pretence of "futureproofing" with more RAM. Let their bank balance hurt and they might stop being horrible.