Monochrome e-ink displays are quite a mature technology at this point, and aren't very expensive. You can go on Alibaba for quotes on bulk rates for e-ink displays.
Anybody still buying MacBooks doesn't know what they are doing... A Lenovo Thinkpad would destroy it in every way imaginable, but marketing is more important that real world function
Some people (like me) still prefer MacBooks due to software rather than hardware. Building a Hackintosh is not pain-free and, although the Linux experience has improved a lot, is still not at the same level.
Reddit is so useful in that regard. So many niches with honest and detailed reviews that I usually don't buy something online without checking a relevant subreddit first.
> How can one be sure those subreddits don't have any paid posters?
My guess is that they eventually will (and I'm sure some already do). However, one thing that kind of helps weed out the fake reviews is the fact that you can inspect a user's post history.
On reddit or other more general sites, you can see their entire comment history. Hopefully you'll notice that a tiny tiny portion of their comments are related to products or reviews.
In other words, you can get a feel for if the person is genuine or not.
Of course, that doesn't 100% rule out paid shilling by (otherwise) honest people, but you do get a much better sense of the veracity of reviews on a site like reddit than you could ever get from Amazon.
What you are describing sounds a whole lot like the Prisoner's Dilemma. For the highest personal success we need to think about maximizing group benefit, rather than being completely self-interested. However, this is rarely the case when competition is involved.
