?
Yeah starting at $3,000. Surely a cheap desktop computer to buy for someone who just wants to surf the web and send email /s.
There is a reason why it is for "enthusiasts" and not for the general wider consumer or typical PC buyer.
That end of the market is occupied by Chromebooks... AKA a different GNU/Linux.
For general desktop use, as you described, nearly any piece of modern hardware, from a RasPI, to most modern smartphones with a dock, could realistically serve most people well.
The thing is, you need to serve both, low-end use cases like browsing, and high-end dev work via workstations, because even for the "average user", there is often one specific program on which they need to rely and which has limited support outside the OS they have grown up with. Course, there will be some programs like Desktop Microsoft Office which will never be ported, but still, Digitis could open the doors to some devs working natively on Linux.
A solid, compact, high-performance, yet low power workstation with a fully supported Linux desktop out of the box could bridge that gap, similar to how I have seen some developers adopt macOS over Linux and Windows since the release of the Studio and Max MacBooks.
Again, we have yet to see independent testing, but I would be surprised if anything of this size, simplicity, efficiency and performance was possible in any hardware configuration currently on the market.
A Nvidia Project Digit/GB10 for $3k with 128GB ram does sound tempting. Especially since it's very likely to have standard NVMe storage that I can expand or replace as needed, unlike the Apple solution. Decent linux support is welcome as well.
Here's hoping, if not I can fall back to a 128GB ram AMD Strix Halo/395 AI Max plus. CPU perf should be in the same ballpark, but not likely to come anywhere close on GPU performance, but still likely to have decent tokens/sec for casual home tinkering.