Hate to defend Apple here, but there are so many more garbage laptops out there for the same price tag that can as well just go directly into landfill. Apple at least have the volume to make sure Mac software actually works on said 8GB.
If Apple manage to decrease market share of other e-waste manufacturers it's good on me. At least these laptops will live 5-7 years as we browser machines.
Problem with cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks is not performance, but horrific build quality, displays, webcams, audio and keyboards. This is something Apple have solved. Also there is no Windows which solves a lot of problems.
I was doing gamedev for years on M1 Air with 16GB / 256GB and some other software engineering too FFS. Surely non-power-users can live with less.