What do you consider "reasonably affordable"? Do you want a laptop, desktop, or don't care which?

If you want to stick to Mac, then just go to apple.com, or their physical store and check your options. There's not a lot of choice with Apple, aside from how much you're willing to spend. Their retina displays are great. Don't get a model released within 2 months, Apple is notorious for having serious defects on brand new models and trying to make the customer pay to fix what is Apple's fault.

Apple has closed it's ecosystem. If someone wants to release a program for OS X, they need to register with and regularly pay apple for the privilege of being on their operating system. They also no longer support OpenGL, which every other computer supports for communicating with graphics cards. This means for many developers, it's not worth developing for Apple. If you mainly use products from large companies like Apple, this might not be an issue for you.

Apple is non-upgradable. They solder everything to the motherboard, or include it in the M1 chip. Don't think that you can just increase the RAM later.

If you go for a non-apple laptop, you'll probably want an ultrabook. They don't come with powerful graphics cards, but they have 4K screens. The best for you would be a IPS HDR screen. IPS has the best color of screen panels, and HDR is 10-bit color. 8-bit is the old standard of 256 levels per color channel (R, G, or B), while 10-bit has 1024 levels.

If you want a touch screen, make sure it is listed. If you use a tablet pen, none will feel as nice as the Apple pencil, but they should still work.

AMD Ryzen processors are cheaper than intel.

There are a variety of weird or different tech offered by different brands. Some laptops can plug in external Graphics cards. Asus has a "duo" brand of laptops which come with an additional screen on the keyboard side. Gigabyte partnered with Microsoft for AI-enhanced ultrabooks that perform better if you absolutely don't care about privacy. On that note, if you get a windows computer, there are quick ways to disable much of the spyware Microsoft includes with their malware of an operating system. Mac's not as bad there, but it does report every app you open to Apple to get their permission to open it, which was found when Apple servers went offline sometime in the last two years.

What do you consider "reasonably affordable"? Do you want a laptop, desktop, or don't care which?

If you want to stick to Mac, then just go to apple.com, or their physical store and check your options. There's not a lot of choice with Apple, aside from how much you're willing to spend. Their retina displays are great. Don't get a model released within 2 months, Apple is notorious for having serious defects on brand new models and trying to make the customer pay to fix what is Apple's fault.

Apple has closed it's ecosystem. If someone wants to release a program for OS X, they need to register with and regularly pay apple for the privilege of being on their operating system. They also no longer support OpenGL, which every other computer supports for communicating with graphics cards. This means for many developers, it's not worth developing for Apple. If you mainly use products from large companies like Apple, this might not be an issue for you.

If you go for a non-apple laptop, you'll probably want an ultrabook. They don't come with powerful graphics cards, but they have 4K screens. The best for you would be a IPS HDR screen. IPS has the best color of screen panels, and HDR is 10-bit color. 8-bit is the old standard of 256 levels per color channel (R, G, or B), while 10-bit has 1024 levels.

If you want a touch screen, make sure it is listed. If you use a tablet pen, none will feel as nice as the Apple pencil, but they should still work.

AMD Ryzen processors are cheaper than intel.

There are a variety of weird or different tech offered by different brands. Some laptops can plug in external Graphics cards. Asus has a "duo" brand of laptops which come with an additional screen on the keyboard side. Gigabyte partnered with Microsoft for AI-enhanced ultrabooks that perform better if you absolutely don't care about privacy. On that note, if you get a windows computer, there are quick ways to disable much of the spyware Microsoft includes with their malware of an operating system. Mac's not as bad there, but it does report every app you open to Apple to get their permission to open it, which was found when Apple servers went offline sometime in the last two years.